Magie Noire
by Rurouni Star
Summary: [A/U, Murphy POV] In a world where Harry Dresden never existed, Detective Karrin Murphy is Chicago's most competent supernatural crime-solver. When a horrible double-murder is handed over to Special Investigations, she's got nothing to rely on but her own training and experience. It's a good thing that's all she needs.
1. Chapter 1

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** I don't know how I ended up here, writing fanfiction again for the first time in more than a decade… but here I am. I had an idea, and it _needed_ writing.

I've spent the last while doing original writing in paranormal romance, the latest of which you can find under the pseudonym Isabella August ( isabellaaugust dot com ). Currently, my first book under that name, Crown of Briars, has come out on Kindle Unlimited ( amazon dot com /dp/B07Q895HC3 ). I have, however, rediscovered my love for with its low-pressure environment and friendly community. So I'm going to try dipping my fingers back into fanfiction in between original novels, just to keep my brain from over-stressing. If my brain continues finding it a nice bit of stress relief, I'll continue… but I make no immediate promises, since this is my silly hobby.

That said… for books and books, Karrin Murphy was my very favorite character in the Dresden Files. I often wished I could have read the novels from her point of view instead of Harry's — or better yet, have her be the main character. It occurred to me today that I could make that happen all by my lonesome, if I really wanted to. So here goes. I've obviously taken some liberties with the source material here and there to make things more interesting, so if you see a detail that strikes you as outrageously different from canon, it's probably on purpose — for instance, as the story begins, you will be following along with _Detective_ Murphy instead of Lieutenant Murphy.

This is for all you other Karrin Murphy superfans.

_Chapter One_

"We're not doing this again," I said, my voice low and menacing. I crossed my arms and schooled my expression into my best, most practiced Bad Cop stare. "If you think you're gonna get away with this, you've got another thing coming."

The computer I was glaring at failed to respond. It remained frozen, the cursor stuck halfway through the last word of my report.

"I could throw you out a window," I growled. "No one would stop me. Hell, some of the boys would probably cheer." I narrowed my eyes. "I'd think really hard about that, if I were you."

The screen didn't even flicker. I sighed, and rubbed my palms against my face. I briefly considered following through on my threat, but I knew that if I did, the higher-ups would chew me out. Part of the reason I had this ancient hunk of junk on my desk in the first place was because Special Investigations had such a shoestring budget.

"You trying to get a confession, Murph?" A light, nasal voice behind me drawled the words. I grimaced.

"You wanna play Good Cop, Ron?" I asked. "I think I've got it on the ropes."

My partner snorted. I heard the crinkle of foil as he bit into something he'd gotten off a food truck. The smell of burrito wafted over toward me, and I groaned. My alarm clock hadn't gone off that morning, and I'd had to book it to get to work on time. I hadn't eaten a bite yet, and my stomach was starting to protest. Ron Carmichael was a charitable soul — he probably would have offered me a bite if I'd asked — but we'd long since established that our tastes in food couldn't possibly be further apart.

"Might as well shut it down and try again later," Carmichael told me. "We've got a case."

I closed my eyes and breathed in slowly. I'd only been transferred into Chicago P.D.'s Special Investigations department a few months ago. I'd been keeping up as best I could, but the sheer breakneck pace of cases was starting to wear on me. Anything weird, anything _not normal_, inevitably got thrown at us as soon as the case's original inheritor could wash their hands of it. It went without saying, of course, that _not normal_ cases almost never got closed. As a result, the pile of open cases on my desk was far larger than I was used to — and every time another one got added to the pile, my heart gave a little spasm of despair. My once-sterling reputation as a detective was slowly, inevitably circling the drain right before my eyes.

"I hear it's real gruesome," Carmichael added absently, and I thinned my lips to a hard line.

I hate Mondays.

I opened my eyes and snatched my coat from the back of my chair. "Where at?" I muttered.

"Madison Hotel. Seventh floor. They've got an officer on-scene. Didn't even bother sending Homicide — they kicked it straight to us. You know what that means."

I suppressed a groan.

Special Investigations always handled _special_ cases. It was right there in the title. But this one was almost certainly what S.I. had internally dubbed a Very Special Case.

"I'll drive," I said shortly. "And Ron — you've got burrito on your tie."

"Tell you what," Carmichael laughed. "First victim that complains, I'll go get it dry-cleaned."

0-0-0-0

It was a _very_ special case.

We both smelled the blood long before the hotel room even came into view. The thick, cloying smell shot straight to my stomach, and I quietly thanked whatever deity had been watching out for me this morning that I hadn't had time to eat anything.

The tall, brunette officer outside the hotel room still looked green around the gills when we turned the corner of the hallway. She wasn't a rookie, either — I was pretty sure she'd graduated from Academy in the class right before mine. I glanced down at her nametag quickly. _Officer Garcia._

"Hey," I said, meeting her eyes with a jerk of my chin. "We're S.I. I'm Detective Karrin Murphy — this is Detective Ron Carmichael. Thanks for watching the door. Got anything interesting to tell us?"

Garcia grimaced as though I'd tried to force-feed her what was left of Carmichael's cold burrito. "Housekeeper found them and called it in," she said. "I only stayed inside long enough to clear the premises and confirm no one was still alive."

"Yeah?" Carmichael asked, interested. He tilted his head to try and look past her into the hotel room "How long did that take?"

"Clearing the place? Less than a minute. Calling signs of life… I don't think I even bothered taking a pulse." Garcia shook her head. "It's all yours. I'll be right here keeping people out."

"Yeah. Thanks." I gave Carmichael a flat look. "Can you drop the burrito in the trash already? I need you on camera duty."

Carmichael sighed. "Fine, fine," he muttered. He'd brought the whole camera case up with him instead of putting it around his neck, mostly because of the last sticky dregs of sauce on his hands. He set it down just outside the door and turned back from the hotel room door. "I'll throw it in the car, just in case."

"In case what?" I demanded. "You're not really gonna eat that later, are you?"

"Don't ask if you don't want to know the answer," he replied.

My partner disappeared back down the hallway, and I shook my head disbelievingly. "All right," I said. "I guess I'll get started."

I stepped through the doorway just past Officer Garcia, and instinctively held my breath.

0-0-0-0

The outer room of the suite was still spotless, if tacky. Officer Garcia had already turned on all the lights full-force, so I got a very clear view of a room that had probably never been intended to see so much light at once. The sitting room looked like it had been decorated by a neophyte with a platinum corporate credit card. Dark leather, shag carpet, velvet curtains… I wouldn't have been surprised to find a heart-shaped pillow somewhere, as an unsubtle wink-nudge toward the suite's primary intended purpose.

I carefully noted details as I pulled on my gloves, searching for anything broken or out-of-place. The door didn't look as though it'd been forced at any point; the housekeeper had probably let herself in with her own card. The stereo and the television were both off. A brass bucket held a recorked bottle of champagne in lukewarm water that had probably once been ice. Two empty glasses sat on the table, one with a smear of bright red lipstick on its rim. I caught sight of a single rose petal on the carpet, but I couldn't find the flower from which it had come.

It all looked fairly peaceful, as far as crime scenes go. No signs of struggle or clumsiness. My brain had already leapt to the obvious conclusion: when I walked into the bedroom, I'd find a dead woman, killed by her partner. Maybe he'd committed suicide shortly thereafter, aghast at his own actions. It had been a depressingly common scenario when I was in Homicide — most of the murders I got called in on tended to fall into the category of either drugs or relationships gone wrong.

But I wasn't in Homicide anymore. If any of the above scenarios had been the case, Special Investigations would never have been called, and I wouldn't be here.

I was sharply reminded of this fact when I dared to sidestep into the bedroom.

Blood was everywhere.

And I do mean _everywhere._

It soaked the carpets. It was sprayed across the ceiling. It was smeared along the mirror… and it was _definitely_ soaked into the bed.

The cranked-up overhead lights spared me no details. The two human figures entwined on the bed were frozen in a gruesome moment of ecstasy. The woman on top was fit, her breasts just a bit too round and firm to be natural. The man beneath her looked like he saw a gym on a regular basis: the handful of white scars I could see on his body suggested he'd seen his fair share of knife fights and maybe a bullet or two.

Both of their chests gaped wide open, their ribs bursting from their skin like something out of _Alien._ I stared just long enough to realize that their hearts were both missing.

A soft grunt came from behind me. I turned, and saw Carmichael standing there with the camera. The sick expression on his face suggested that he was suddenly regretting his last few bites of burrito.

"Pictures," I reminded him stonily. The comment was a mercy — an offering of something to focus on. He seized on it, hauling the camera up to his face with shaking fingers and dissociating himself from the mess by putting a lens between him and the horror.

I turned back, and forced myself to study the two victims more closely. The man in the bed had a tattoo on his right biceps — a winged dagger. I didn't recognize the picture as any kind of gang symbol, but I was willing to bet those scars marked him as someone who'd run into the law from the wrong side at least once. Tattoos were always entered into the system as identifying marks. If the hotel couldn't ID him, that tattoo probably could.

"Get a shot of that," I told Carmichael, pointing out the mark. He dutifully obliged.

"What the hell d'you think happened to _them?_" he asked in a soft voice. He didn't look up from the man's arm, but I forced myself to consider those bizarre chest wounds as I answered him.

"I think it's pretty clear," I said. "Their hearts exploded out of their chests." I said it matter-of-factly only because it was so obviously true. Now that I looked around, I realized that I could see fleshy bits of organ on the ceiling along with the blood spray there. Other pieces of heart were scattered in with the carpet.

"Jesus." Carmichael paled behind the camera. He was a seasoned S.I. detective. I had more total years on him if you counted my time in Homicide, but he'd probably seen more downright _weirdness_ than I had. It took a lot to rattle a man like that. Frankly, I wasn't feeling so hot myself — but I had years of practice acting tougher and more competent than everyone around me, even when I didn't feel it. Being a woman in the police department meant that any sign of weakness got magnified a hundredfold, turned into Yet Another Reason no one liked working with lady cops.

"I've never seen anything like this," Carmichael admitted. "_Nothing._ And I'm tellin' you, Murph, I have seen some _weird_ shit."

I swallowed as inconspicuously as I could manage. My stomach was roiling, but instinct told me I couldn't afford to show it.

The lights flickered for a moment. We both jumped, startled. The effect on the scene was uncanny, like a strobe light in a Halloween haunted house. In between flashes, I had the thought that it made the corpses look like wax figures instead of real bodies. Somehow, that was even scarier and more repugnant.

One of the lights blew abruptly. I took a step back, wide-eyed. Carmichael, S.I.'s resident avowed skeptic, was already backpedaling for the door, swearing loudly.

The two of us stepped back out into the sitting room, shaking. Slowly, the lights in the room steadied and came back on… with the exception of the bulb that had burst. A wordless silence fell between us. We shared a look that agreed: neither of us would mention the moment of cowardice.

Carmichael cleared his throat. "Uh. Well."

I steadied myself with a deep breath. The smell of blood was so keen I could _taste_ it. "Yeah. That."

"Everything all right in there?" Officer Garcia asked in a raised voice.

"Everything's fine!" I called back. "Other than the dead guys — they're still dead!"

Carmichael chortled nervously at that.

I shook my head, and forced my way back into the bedroom. "I don't even know where to begin with this shit," I muttered at him. "Let's just… start with the evidence, and go from there."


	2. Chapter 2

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Two_

"We're not going very far with means or opportunity," I told Carmichael. "I can't even begin to speculate how you explode someone's heart, let alone whether you need in the room with them to do it. That leaves us with motive."

My partner dropped two fresh coffees on the table in the tiny conference room we'd nabbed at the department, and pulled himself out a chair. "If we want motive, we work from IDs," he reasoned. "Organized Crime thinks that tat belongs to Tommy Tomm, but we can't be sure until his fingerprints come back. The woman's probably an upscale call girl, so maybe we'll get lucky and she's in the system too." He sighed. "Damned impolite of 'em to die without their wallets nearby. I hate wasting time like this."

We'd spent most of the day combing over the crime scene with the techs when they arrived. Normally the forensic geeks were thrilled to work on S.I. cases — they appreciated a little weirdness now and then — but their enthusiasm had dimmed perceptibly on this one, given that it was in a hotel room. Some poor sap was probably _still _there, lifting fingerprints from every conceivable surface.

I frowned at the whiteboard in front of me, where I'd started up some rough notes. "Tommy Tomm?" I said. "I've heard that name. What circles does he run in?"

"Mafia." Carmichael's tone was grim. "He's Marcone's enforcer."

I winced as I wrote the name _Marcone_ on the whiteboard. Great. "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone was the latest and greatest figure to rise to the top of the scummy pond that was Chicago's organized crime. Some cops quietly talked about him as though he were a civilizing influence on crime in the city. The memory of the bloody Vargassi civil war, with bodies dropping every other day, was still fresh in everyone's mind; by comparison, Marcone's iron grip on the city felt almost pleasant. I still considered him vermin, but he was very _well-connected_ vermin. His battery of high-priced lawyers were bound to meddle in any case connected to one of his people. I sometimes suspected Marcone had his fingers directly in the police department as well… but that was the kind of thing you only voiced out loud rarely, if ever, and only for a damned good reason.

Marcone and I had a history, of sorts. I had the dubious distinction of being one of the few people to get up on the stand and testify against him. Naturally, he'd gotten off not guilty.

"All right," I said. "Well, we've gotta start with _some_ kind of assumption if we're gonna get anywhere with this case. May as well go with that. If our male vic really is Tommy Tomm, then he's gotta have a long list of people who might want him dead. We can focus on the biggest names. Did Organized Crime offer anything useful on that front?"

Carmichael hauled himself to his feet again and headed to the board. He started writing out names, and I… admittedly zoned out.

My brain kept getting stuck in a horrific loop, replaying the image of the crime scene in my head. After so many years in Homicide, I thought I'd gotten up close and comfortable with the idea of my own mortality… but the realization that there was a new way to die that I'd never even considered before had shaken me pretty hard.

We all deal with death in different ways. My mother disappeared when I was a kid; my father, a cop in his own right, hadn't softballed it for me. _Your mother never would've left you on purpose,_ he said. _Something bad's probably happened to her, and I won't give up until I know who did it._

Dad did give up, though. I watched as the years went by, and the lack of answers ground him down. Not long after I finally left the house and struck out on my own, the last of his strength gave out. He died with his own gun in his mouth… and my already screwed-up relationship with death got even more twisted.

I hadn't been intending to be a cop back then. I'd grown up watching what it had done to my father, and I thought I was smart enough not to want anything to do with that kind of damage. But once Dad was gone for good, I found myself at Academy, feeling like maybe police work would fill the hole that he'd left in my life. Sometimes I felt like I was living in my father's shadow on purpose, clinging to all the little shreds of himself he'd left behind. I lived in my childhood house, surrounded by his old things; I passed through the same Academy, walked the same halls, and heard echoes of him in the stories some of the older cops still told about him.

The whole time, I forced myself to confront the worst that humanity had to offer. I had a pathological need to understand _how_ and _why_ the world kept taking things from me. I saw more than one person die right in front of my eyes, victimized by a dark, dirty side of human nature that most people walked through their lives blissfully incapable of understanding. I looked killers in the eye and saw not just a total lack of guilt, but a sense of deep satisfaction.

Every time I faced up to that darkness, I felt… not safe, exactly. Maybe _satiated_ is the word. I'd briefly feel like I'd faced something so much worse than death that I didn't need to be afraid of it anymore.

The scene in that hotel room had upset that precarious equilibrium of mine. At this point, I was rarely surprised by how much human beings would torment each other if they could. But now someone had found a way to go further than I'd thought was physically possible.

There was something out there that was darker than anything I'd ever met before. And that… that scared me.

"Murph?"

I blinked slowly, dragging myself back to the present. Carmichael had paused in front of the whiteboard. He was looking at me with a hint of concern.

That wouldn't do. We weren't good enough partners for that shit yet.

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry, just tired. I'm gonna stretch my legs for a bit, get my blood going. Maybe it'll kick something loose."

He nodded, taking the excuse without complaint. That's what we all did around here. We pretended we were okay, and then we pretended like we believed each other's lies about how we were okay.

I shoved to my feet and headed for the door. I was getting maudlin again. I _definitely_ needed a walk.

0-0-0-0

A light shower of rain pitter-pattered down onto me as I walked. I hiked up the hood of my coat and stuck my hands into my pockets. The weather was just starting to warm up as spring came around, but things still got just a bit chilly when the sun went down.

The brisk air helped clear my head, but it didn't push out the image of those two dead people. I probably shouldn't have expected it to. I obsess. It's what I do.

Some wary instinct managed to ping my senses, though, as I took the second block from the precinct. I noticed the dark blue Cadillac that had started following me out of the corner of my eye. Whoever it was, they were ballsy, following a cop still in plain view of their own workplace. I grimaced, and reached for my cell phone.

"_Yeah?"_ Carmichael's voice answered.

"Some dipshit is real interested in my little evening walk," I told him. "I think they were waiting for me to leave the building."

"_You want me to cut 'em off?_" I already heard him up and moving.

"Nah. Just checking in before I have a chat with them myself. I'll give you the license plate number."

I turned on my heel and headed over for the car. To be fair, I don't think the driver was trying to hide their interest. They paused and let me circle around the back while I rattled off numbers to Carmichael. When I knocked on the tinted front window, the back door of the car opened instead.

A tall man with bright red hair stepped out of the vehicle. His square jaw and linebacker shoulders made him an intimidating presence — but he seemed very cognizant of the nearby precinct, because I saw him intentionally relax his posture and show his empty palms.

"Miss," he said, in a gravelly voice. "The boss would like a word."

I spread my feet shoulder-width, steeling my own posture. The phone was still at my ear. "It's detective," I replied. "That's what the badge is for. And maybe your boss ought to ask me himself."

"_Detective_ Murphy," called a man's polite voice, from inside the car. "I was hoping to have a word, if you don't mind."

My back went up. I recognized that voice. My tone cooled considerably. "I don't get into cars with strange men. You can always come into the station, Johnny. It's right there."

"I'm not looking for anything so official." The tall, heavyset man stepped aside, and I got a better look at the man inside the car. He was probably around my age, though stress had given him a bit of salt in his pepper hair, and money had smoothed the lines on his face and given him an impeccable tan. He was wearing a casual sports jacket and jeans, and he had a friendly smile — but I knew he was a shark.

I met Johnny Marcone's faded green eyes directly.

"You hear that, Ron?" I said into the phone. "Gentleman Johnny Marcone doesn't want things to get too official. Why don't you write that down so we've got it on the record?"

Marcone's smile inched a bit wider at that, as though he was in on the joke and not the target of it. "You haven't changed a bit, Detective," he said. "How comforting."

"_Hey Murph, while you've got him, can you ask if he's really got a gold toilet in his bathroom? Me and the boys got a longstanding bet to settle."_

"Aw, hell, why not," I said. "Hey Johnny, Ron wants to know if you've really got a gold toilet in your bathroom." I leaned back on my heels, making it clear that I had no intention of getting into the car with him.

"Detective." Marcone's smile faded very slightly. I saw the shark come out behind his eyes. "We both know that you were going to end up on my doorstep eventually. I am giving you the opportunity to do this in a friendly manner — no lawyers, no recorders. If you turn me down now and ask me into interview later, I can assure you that you will find it very difficult to make it onto my schedule."

That stopped me. A dull, aching rage rose in my stomach. _You piece of shit._ Obviously, it hadn't been a coincidence that Johnny Marcone decided to invite me into his car on the very same day that one of his men turned up dead in a murder that had been assigned to me. But the deeper implication was that someone in the department had called him up to tip him off. The rats were real.

Marcone held up a hand my way. He could see me getting ready to tell him to go fuck himself. "We have the same ultimate aims here, Detective," he told me. "I assure you, I have only the greatest respect for your work, and for you personally. I am not here to make things difficult for you — in fact, the exact opposite. Please take a moment and consider the dead, before you throw that back into my face."

My teeth clicked shut on the words I'd been about to say. I set my jaw. For all that I hated Marcone, he'd hit me in exactly the right spot. There were two people dead — one of them probably an innocent bystander — and their killer was still on the loose. A killer that was different from anything I had ever encountered before, and maybe far outside my means to catch.

"...Ron?" I said into the phone quietly.

Carmichael was deadly silent, on the other side of the line. He slowly cleared his throat. _"You getting in that car, Murph?_" he asked me.

"Yeah," I snarled, though I hated the word. "You got my back?"

"_I got your back,"_ Carmichael said. _"I heard his voice, you ID'd him. If you don't come back, we'll nail him to the wall._"

Marcone jerked his chin at the man outside the car. "Please get the door for the detective, Mister Hendricks," he said.

"I can get my own damn door," I muttered. I stalked past the big man for the other side of the car, and jerked the door open.

As I settled into the other seat, I became very acutely aware that I was sitting within only a few feet of the man who had climbed his way to the top of Chicago's underworld on a staircase made of dead bodies. Many of those bodies had names marked on folders that also had _my_ name, as the primary investigator. I'd gotten my guy in a few of those cases… but the killers were ultimately just trigger-men for Marcone himself. Once caught, they'd gone down voluntarily, never copping to their employer.

Marcone held out his hand toward me expectantly. "Please let me keep an eye on your phone for you, Detective." He said it like it was a generous offer, instead of a way to cover his criminal ass.

I slapped the phone into his hand perhaps a little harder than was strictly necessary. Marcone held it up to his ear briefly. "Goodbye, Detective Carmichael," he said into the receiver. "I'll try to have your partner home before curfew."

He hit the end call button before Carmichael had the chance to respond.

Marcone turned to regard me more fully, as the car continued idling its way along the street. "Let's get to the point, Detective," he said. "My man is dead. You have his case. I have an obvious interest in finding out who killed him and why."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "The only reason I got into this car is because you implied you had information for me," I said. "Now you think you're going to get case details out of _me?_"

Marcone shook his head. "I am offering a trade, Detective," he said. "I can give you details about Tommy's comings and goings, his associates, his enemies. I'm prepared to offer you information that you don't yet know you even need. But if I do that, there are things that I need from you in return."

I raised my eyebrows incredulously. "We are not friends, Marcone," I said. "We're not even allies. I want you behind bars. You can't possibly believe that I'm going to strike a deal with you like the other dirty bastards on your payroll."

Marcone sized me up. I know he didn't see much: I'm a five foot nothing blond woman, and I've had men describe me unironically using the words _cute as a button_.

But I had come close — so close — to sending Marcone away to prison forever. We both knew that. It had to color his perceptions of me.

"I'm not crude enough to offer you money," Marcone told me. "We both know that isn't something that drives you." His flat eyes fixed upon me, and I imagined a yawning void behind them, where normal people kept their soul. "I am offering you cooperation, backup. The support you need in order to find this killer and survive them. In return, I am asking only that you call me first, when you find something. That request is for your own good, Detective, and for the good of your associates. Your department cannot handle this case. If you try to keep it in-house, there are very good odds that the body count gets very high. As primary investigator, your body would sit near the top of the pile."

I stared him down. The offer was a slap in the face, and I could tell he knew it. "Do you know why I'm in S.I., Marcone?" I asked softly.

Those shark-like eyes sharpened on me. "I know quite a lot about you, Detective," Marcone said. But he didn't specifically respond to my question, so I elaborated anyway, to drive home my point.

"I caught another cop re-selling drugs," I told Marcone. "And I ratted him out. Testified against him. The whole nine yards." I sucked in a breath. "That killed my career. No one but S.I. is ever gonna want to work with me again. Hell, I got a pile of death threats at home telling me what my own side will do to me for not looking the other way. The guy I put away? He was one of my dad's old buddies. If I wasn't willing to sell my integrity for _him_, I don't know what the hell makes you think I'll do it for _you_."

Marcone didn't look away from me as I spoke. I knew I should have just stopped there, but I was still rattled and angry, and some part of me needed to stare down something I understood, just one more time.

"I've met a hundred guys like you," I said. "You won't apologize for being ruthless. You think it's a virtue. You sell people like cattle, you peddle drugs, you order people's deaths. And you sleep perfectly well at night, using whatever shitty excuses you've made up for yourself. You don't have the balls to hold onto your own integrity, so you made up a bunch of shades of grey to hide in." I grabbed the door handle. "We're not playing classy cops and robbers. You can respect me all you want, but I don't respect you — and I never will. You're human trash to me. I have no interest in walking down this road with you for any reason."

I pushed open the car door and reached out to snatch my phone back from his hand.

Marcone seized my wrist. I twitched. Instinct had me halfway through an aikido move that would have broken his thumb and maybe a few other bones with it… but I restrained myself just in time. I'd gone far enough already. If I committed physical assault, neither of us would probably like where this went next.

"We _are_ allies," Marcone told me. His voice was cold now, closer to the snake that I knew hid behind that kind, personable facade. "You don't yet understand that, Detective, because you are lacking in exactly the information I propose to give you. I am not the worst thing in this city. There is such a thing out there as real evil — things that see you and I and the rest of humanity as prey, playthings." He pressed my phone into my hand. "Things that can tear a man's heart from his chest from miles away." He released my wrist… then handed me a card. "You may yet change your mind. I'm a practical man. I'll take your call if you do."

I clenched my hand around the card. It wrinkled slightly… but he knew I wouldn't throw it away. If I decided I wanted Marcone in interview, it was the first line I'd call.

As I stepped out of the vehicle onto the street, Marcone looked back toward the front of the car. "The woman is Jennifer Stanton," he said. "She worked at the Velvet Room. If you don't think you need me, it's a good place to go get yourself killed."

I turned away from his car, and started hiking back the way I'd come.


	3. Chapter 3

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Three_

Marcone knew far too much.

The walk back _did_ jog my brain, but not with regard to the case itself. Instead, I found myself lingering over the details he'd mentioned. Marcone knew there were two bodies — well, fine, maybe he'd bribed someone at the hotel. But he also knew that we hadn't found the woman's identity yet.

That meant the rats were closer to home than I'd hoped.

Marcone's flowery metaphors about _real evil_ and _things that prey on humans_ surprised me. Some of the very bad men I'd met sometimes needed to draw a line, to find some sort of behavior worse than theirs so that they could reassure themselves they weren't the _worst_ thing out there. But Marcone hadn't struck me as that sort. It occurred to me that my intuition might have gone wonky during my time behind a desk. The department hadn't dared put me in the field until I finished testifying in court — and though I'd never admit it aloud, riding a desk was probably good for me, given that I was still recovering from medical fallout. A face full of Three-Eye will do that to you.

I shuddered at the thought. Even the briefest mention of Three-Eye was enough to send my brain hurtling back to that hideous stretch of time, after one of my pissed-off coworkers dosed me up with the shit in retribution for my testimony. All the fucked up hallucinations I'd seen were still fresh in my mind, stuck in full technicolor clarity. The department shrink said that sometimes happened with traumas. I really didn't like that term. _Trauma._ It implied that a single inadvertent brush with a drug was something my brain considered on par with being in a war zone. That was _dumb_. It was weak.

But it was true. I still had nightmares, more frequently than I dared to admit. Worse, I sometimes felt real-time echoes of that weird trance-like state I'd been in while I was under the influence. I'd had to fight to get even this comparably shitty assignment in S.I. If I admitted I'd never fully gotten over the Three-Eye incident, it would be all the department needed to force me into early retirement. Too many assholes would be too happy about that for me to let it happen.

Carmichael was pacing when I headed back into the conference room. He wasn't a man that paced often, given his sheer girth and his affection for sitting. Relief flickered over his face as he saw me enter, but some uncharitable part of me wondered whether it was faked. _Ron would be a great choice for a mole,_ my brain suggested.

But no. If Marcone had Carmichael in his pocket, why would he bother with me? Carmichael had access to exactly the same information I did at any given time. I'd shared everything with him so far, and only Marcone's conversation with me gave me any reason to wonder whether I should continue doing that.

"You okay?" Carmichael asked carefully.

"I'm back, aren't I?" I asked. I'm sure my face must have been a thundercloud, based on his flinch. I headed over to the whiteboard and angrily scrawled _Jennifer Stanton_ and _Velvet Room_ onto the board.

Carmichael considered that stonily. "So he _did_ give you something?" he hazarded.

I tossed the marker down. "Yeah," I gritted out. "He also made me an _offer_. I wasn't a fan."

Carmichael knitted his brow. "Shit. He tried to bribe you? I thought it was common knowledge by now that's a bad idea."

I shook my head. "He thought we'd cuddle up and be buddies on the case. He implied he knew lots more than he gave me, that he'd share it all if I just promised to report to him first." I grabbed my now-cold coffee from the table and chugged a few swallows to rinse the disgust from my mouth.

"You coulda just _pretended_ to take him up on it," Carmichael mused.

I shot him a flat look, and he shrugged. "Okay, maybe bad idea. Still, at least we've got a lead now."

I stared him down over the table. His eyebrows knitted together. I stepped back to close the door to the conference room.

"I want to get one thing straight," I said. "Marcone wants what he wants. If I don't give it to him, I'm pretty damn sure he's gonna go around me and ask you instead." I fixed Carmichael with a hard look. "You're gonna turn him down too, Ron. I want you to promise me that, to my face."

Carmichael frowned. To his credit, he didn't pretend to be insulted. Cops on the take liked to go straight for the "how dare you imply I'm dirty" line, because it allowed them to protest without actually saying they _weren't_.

"I'm not gonna make that promise," Carmichael told me. My jaw clenched, but he held up a hand. "Murph, I like you. I respect you. But I gotta tell you, it sometimes feels like you've got a little bit of a deathwish. I don't got that. You know as well as I do that the department likes to jerk us around, send us out there without an ounce of backup. Now, I'm not normally the kind to chat up mobsters, but if we're out there with our asses in the wind against the kind of psychopath that tears out people's hearts, I think my conscience might be clear this one time just letting the psycho and the mobster beat the shit out of each other."

He met my eyes. "What I _will_ promise is that if I make that call, it won't be about money. And I won't do it without tellin' you first. I hope that's good enough, because that's what I've got for you."

I clenched my fingers into fists. I had some uncharitable instincts running through my head. _If you weren't willing to risk your life, why become a cop? _I wanted to demand. The deathwish comment had hit a little too close to home, though, and I recognized the way it got my blood going. I took a long, deep breath.

Carmichael had a point. It was one thing to risk your life knowing that the department would do everything in its power to make that a worthy, calculated risk. It was another thing entirely to put yourself in the middle of a mafia spat with only your partner for support.

I didn't like it. I didn't agree with it. But it wasn't unreasonable, and at least he'd been up-front with me about it.

"This conversation's not done," I said, reluctantly. "...but I appreciate you being straight with me."

Carmichael shrugged. "Figure I'd better," he said wryly. "Last guy who wasn't straight with you ended up in prison."

The room got uncomfortable after that comment. He must have realized the dark humor had gone a little too far, because he sighed. "Sorry, Murph. That _was_ a joke, in case that wasn't clear."

"I got it," I said stiffly.

Thankfully, the sound of Carmichael's cellphone broke the silence. He picked it up after the very first ring, anxious for the distraction. "This is Ron," he said.

A rushed, excitable voice on the other end tumbled out of the phone. I couldn't hear the words, but I saw Carmichael sigh. "Yeah. Uh. Sure. One of us'll be over soon."

He closed the line, and gave me a pleading look. "You wanna go down to the morgue, Murph?" he asked. "The M.E. on our bodies wants to see us. I figured I could, uh. Go chat up Vice about the Velvet Room."

I frowned. "What's wrong with the M.E.?" I asked defensively. I'd grown a lot more fond of both the forensics crew and the medical examiners since my shuffle to S.I. They still bothered to take my calls, unlike the rest of the investigative division.

Carmichael winced. "It's nothing personal," he said. "I just hate polka."

0-0-0-0

It sounded like an Oktoberfest concert in the morgue.

I heard the downbeat as I walked down the hall toward the exam room, fresh scrubs pulled over my clothes and little blue booties on my shoes. You could always tell which medical examiner was on duty based on the music that filtered out. Polka meant you'd find Waldo Butters behind the door.

I had to knock more than a few times to get his attention. Eventually, though, the music paused, and the M.E. opened the door for me.

"Karrin!" Butters beamed at me from behind his glasses. "Great to see you! I didn't realize this was your case!" He was a comparatively small man, only a few inches taller than I was. His short black hair always ran a bit wild, so that he had a kind of perpetually surprised look to his face. But he was one of the friendliest guys I worked with, which meant that I could forgive him an awful lot — up to and including his love of polka.

"I'm actually the primary," I said. "But we tend to put Ron's phone number on just about everything these days." My name on the paperwork tended to get things lost or shifted to the bottom of the pile. I'd long since given up that fight. "Anyway, it's nice _someone's_ glad to see me."

And it was. I'd nearly forgotten what it felt like to be treated as a trusted friend instead of a pariah. The expression on Butters' face warmed my heart just a little.

"Oh, come on in," Butters stuttered out belatedly, opening the door wider so that I could step past him. "I'm particularly glad it's you, actually. I'm about to say some crazy stuff, and Ron really doesn't like crazy."

"And I _do _like crazy?" I asked. It was a rhetorical question, but Butters treated it seriously.

"I mean, maybe you're not a fan of it either, but at least you don't look at me like I'm insane when I give it to you straight," Butters said. He headed over toward two side-by-side gurneys, where the bodies from the scene had been laid out. "Good news on these — I didn't even have to crack the ribs open. That's my least favorite part, you know. It's hard to get the right leverage when you're this short."

I grinned. Butters and I had commiserated more than once on the woes of living in a world that was built for taller people. "I'd say I know what you mean, but I really don't. I'm comfortable with a lot at this point, but cracking ribs is still over the line for me."

"Well, I guess that's why we're in our respective corners," Butters said cheerfully. "Anyway, I still want to show you something, just so you know I'm not pulling your leg."

Butters pulled down the sheet that covered a body I was now about ninety-nine percent sure belonged to Tommy Tomm. He'd left the chest cavity open, which meant that he'd probably finished the exam only a minute or two before his phone call. "Look inside the cavity here. You see these bits inside, embedded in the back wall?" He reached gloved fingers right inside, so he could point out what he was talking about directly.

I grimaced, but followed his direction. I wasn't really sure what I was looking at, but I did see some kind of soft tissue scattered across the back of the chest cavity. "Okay. I see them. What are they?"

"They're bits of heart," Butters told me. "They got blown _backward_, hard enough to stick. I mean, most of the momentum was clearly still forward-focused, but some of it went the other way, too."

I knitted my brow. "I get that's weird," I said slowly. "But I'm not clear on what it _means_."

Butters blinked behind his glasses. "It means that whatever force blew the heart out of the chest cavity came from _inside_ the heart."

"Uh," I said intelligently. I stared at the place his fingers still pointed. He was right — it did sound crazy. It was a good thing I was looking right at the evidence.

"Right?" Butters said. "Weird. Something inside the heart basically exploded. But nothing's burned, so it had to have been a purely kinetic force. I'm really unclear how most of the force got directed forward. I'm even more unclear how you implant a purely kinetic explosive in two people's hearts without leaving surgical scars or causing heart failure. And, uh. That's the only theory I've got so far." He sounded duly sheepish about that fact.

I shook my head. "Jesus. Yeah, I've got nothing."

Butters pulled his fingers out of the chest cavity. "I'd really take it as a favor if you let me know when you find out what did this," he said. "I'm dying of curiosity."

"Phrasing, Butters," I joked.

He laughed nervously. "Right. Uh. Well, as far as other stuff goes — they were definitely having sex at the time, but I figure you knew that already. They probably died from shock well before they would have died from lack of circulation. Both vics had alcohol in their system — enough to be buzzed, not drunk. I didn't find anything else on a standard tox screen, but some of the more complex tests haven't come in yet."

I looked over the woman. "Breast implants?" I asked, remembering my previous suspicions.

"Oh, yep," Butters said. "I checked the serial number on the implants. We've positively ID'd her as Jennifer Stanton."

_Marcone wasn't pulling my leg,_ I thought.

"I haven't got a whole lot else, but I'll let you know if any of the other tests come in useful," Butters told me.

I nodded. "You can call my phone from now on, if you want. Doubt you'll have trouble getting through."

Butters paused at that. His face softened. It was a weird look on him, given that he was currently wearing bloodstained blue scrubs.

"I'm really sorry, Karrin," he said. "For what it's worth."

I swallowed. "You don't have to be sorry," I told him. "It was a joke."

Butters chewed on his lip. He seemed to consider shutting up about it. But Butters wasn't a cop; he didn't have the same aversion to emotional subjects that seemed to pervade the department. "I don't like what happened to you," he said. "I don't think it's fair."

"I did my job," I said, with an edge in my voice. "I paid a price. It wasn't the worst thing that could have happened to me. I could have shown up down here."

"It doesn't have to be the worst thing to be bad," Butters said. "Uh." He looked embarrassed now. But there was an odd determination in his squared-off shoulders. "I don't like it. And you can't make me like it. I just want you to know some people around here still have your back."

I pressed my lips together. His voice was earnest, sincere. The words _did_ mean a lot. I didn't want to pretend that they didn't. And I knew Butters wouldn't think any less of me for showing it.

"...thanks," I said. My voice came out a little bit hoarse.

Butters blinked. He smiled gently. "Yeah. Uh. Of course." He made a move as though to hug me, but stopped himself just in time, glancing down at the bloodstains. He stepped back and cleared his throat. "You, uh. You let me know if you want to come to the fest this year or something. I'm around for stuff. Coffee. Whatever."

I nodded. It was a nice gesture. I'd lost a lot of longtime friends — and god knew I wasn't welcome at the usual cop bars anymore. I wasn't the biggest polka fan, but I seriously considered taking him up on the invitation anyway. I could do much worse than hanging out with Waldo Butters.

"I'll work on my ear for polka," I told him. "Send me some recommendations."

The beaming smile that crossed his face nearly made up for the blood and dead bodies that surrounded him.

As I walked back out of the morgue, I realized that I'd been carrying around a heavy weight — and that it had lifted off my shoulders just a little bit.

It was good to have friends again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Four_

They say the first forty-eight hours in a murder are the most important. My experience more-or-less bears that out. If you don't find a solid suspect within about two days, you start running into problems as people's memories get hazy, the crime scene starts getting stale, and everyone involved in an ancillary fashion just kind of moves on with their lives. Close friends and family might linger obsessively over a case for years, but everyone else just wants to forget about death as soon as humanly possible.

Because of this, Carmichael and I probably weren't going to see a bed until at least the next day.

"If we've got positive ID on Stanton, that's enough to get a warrant for her home," Carmichael said, as we reconnoitred with our respective information. "I'll put that through tonight, see if it comes in by morning. Meantime, Vice says the girls at the Velvet Room are probably gonna keep their lips sealed. Madame Bianca's not a talkative sort, and she leans pretty hard on 'em. I've got names for a few of the girls, though, if we still wanna try that angle."

I frowned. "I might be able to get something with a less direct approach," I said. "I can come off less threatening than a guy cop. That leaves you with the mobsters, though. You good with that?"

Carmichael shrugged. "Marcone's probably gonna button them down too, given that we're not kowtowing to him. But I'll go through the motions, see if any of 'em let something slip."

I chewed on my lip, turning over the problem of Madame Bianca in my mind. "Hey, can you look something up for me?" I asked him. "I want to know if Jennifer had any female relatives."

Carmichael raised an eyebrow. "I'm not your secretary," he said, though his tone was more curious than belligerent. "Why don't you look it up yourself?"

I gave him a flat look. "Me and the computer still haven't made up," I told him. "I don't want to give it the wrong idea."

Carmichael grinned. "All right, I'll sweet talk the machine for you," he said. "Give me a second."

0-0-0-0

If I was walking anywhere near the Velvet Room, I knew I had to tell the Lieutenant. This didn't please me, mostly because I avoided his office whenever that was humanly possible.

Lieutenant Noah Walker was a relatively young appointment. He'd scaled his way up the ladder through Robbery in record time, then jumped inadvisably at the chance to make Lieutenant, regardless of department. It hadn't taken him long in Special Investigations to realize his error; everyone in the trenches knew he was desperate to make a good impression on the higher-ups so he could get out again, before his career became too tarnished. That meant good stats and closed cases. Taken to its logical conclusion, that meant finding fall guys, pinning crimes on them, and making up stories out of whole cloth.

Obviously, I didn't play those games — and everyone in S.I. knew I wouldn't look the other way if other people played them. This meant that as far as Lieutenant Walker was concerned, I was enemy number one.

"Detective," he said, as I made my way into his office. "Got good news for me on the double-homicide, I hope?"

I smiled tightly. "I do," I said. "We've positively identified the woman as Jennifer Stanton. Word is she worked at the Velvet Room. I'm going to head down there and try to get some information out of her coworkers. I figured I ought to let you know if I'm gonna be hanging out near a highly illegal brothel."

Walker smiled back at me without humor. We both knew there was no love lost between us. He was a tall, athletic man — when he stood up straight, he had a good foot and change on me. But there was no sign of grey in his chestnut brown hair, and very few lines on his fresh face. His lack of experience was and would remain painfully obvious until he aged naturally. That gave me a strange upper hand in the power balance between us. I knew he hated that.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he said. I gave him a stony look, but didn't say what I was thinking. I wasn't sure where Walker's moral bottom line actually fell.

Another thought inevitably occurred to me as I considered him. Walker was ambitious. He might have been the sort to deal with Marcone, if the price was right. And Marcone certainly seemed willing to go to great lengths to get in on this case.

I shook my head slightly. There was no avoiding it. I was going to be wondering about everyone in S.I. until this case was done — and probably longer than that.

A frown creased the Lieutenant's face. "Anything else, Detective Murphy?" he asked. There was a hint of irritation in his tone now.

"Not yet," I told him. "You'll be the first to know."

As I headed out of his office, I couldn't help but wonder whether Marcone would be second, no matter what I did.

0-0-0-0

The Velvet Room was known as a _private club_, which mostly served to keep the police off the premises without very good reason. You needed a membership to get in, and the mansion Bianca ran it from was technically classified as private property. In order to get in to talk to the girls who were working that night, I needed either a warrant or an invitation.

The good news was that all I wanted was off-the-record information, useful for expanding my investigation to other areas. I didn't need to search the place, or arrest anyone. That meant I was free to lie my ass off.

I parked a few blocks away from the mansion and unclipped my badge from my belt, stashing it in the side pocket of a purse I'd grabbed from lost and found. I loosened up my button-down shirt and threw on a light bit of makeup, purposely smearing my eyeliner and mascara. Sometimes, it wasn't the worst thing in the world to be cute as a button. No one ever accused cute women of being cops.

I had to work to change my posture as I walked the rest of the way to the mansion. I still practiced regular Aikido; that, along with the years of copwork, gave me a kind of distinctive stance. I tried to close up my body language and shrink my presence, but I knew I was only going to be so successful at it. The smeared makeup would hopefully hold enough attention that no one looked too hard at my posture. Crying women flip a switch in certain people's brains that makes it difficult for them to stay on-script.

The mansion was surrounded by an iron fence with a single gate. The security guard on the other side was big and blocky, wearing an appropriately stiff suit. He narrowed his eyes at me as I approached, but his hackles weren't raised the same way they would have been if I'd been a man.

"Ma'am," he said, as I got close. "Unless you've got an appointment, I'm gonna have to ask you to move along."

I forced a sniffle. "I… I, um." I swallowed. "I don't have an appointment. I… I just want to talk to someone, please. I'm Jenny's sister."

The guard's attitude changed very slightly. He softened in spite of himself. "I'm not sure that's a good idea, Miss…?"

"Monica," I said, using the name I'd had Carmichael dig up for me. "Please, I'm begging you. I don't want to make trouble, I just… I just need to know what happened. Can you just ask if I can come in, please?"

The guard sighed heavily. "I'll ask," he said, capitulating. "But I'm not gonna promise anything. If the answer is no, I need you to move along."

I nodded in what I hoped was a miserable manner, as the guard pulled out his cell phone and stepped away from the gate to make a call.

I strained to listen in, but I couldn't catch more than a word or two. It was a short conversation, at least — and as the guard closed his phone, I watched his posture shift subconsciously to something a little bit more welcoming. _Jackpot_, I thought.

The guard unlocked the gate, and reached out to offer me an arm. "You can come in," he said carefully. "But we're heading in the back. We'll find you something to wipe down your face, and you can have a chat with Bianca." He paused, and glanced at my purse. "I'll have to take a look in there as well," he said. His voice was apologetic.

I passed him the purse, trying not to panic. Thankfully, he only took a cursory glance inside, without checking the pockets. He passed it back, and my heart slowed down to a normal pace once more.

I took his arm, and waited for him to lock up the gate behind me. I wasn't thrilled to be talking to the Madame directly — she was more likely to be cagey with me than one of the girls would have been — but it was still probably further than a male detective like Carmichael would have gotten.

True to his word, the guard took me through a servant's entrance. Some of these old mansions still had them; little out-of-the-way doors with narrow staircases that kept you out of view of the house's main area. Bianca probably didn't want a distressed-looking woman in plain view in her brothel, in case someone thought I was a mistreated girl.

The inside of the mansion was fancy, roomy, dimly-lit. I heard the distant but very distinct sounds of sex through the wall as we walked. I tried to keep my eyes on the floor, but I couldn't help sizing up the place as I went, counting potential exits in case things went sideways. Marcone's comment stuck in my head. _It's a good place to go get yourself killed._

He'd told the truth about Jennifer Stanton. He might well have been telling the truth about the Velvet Room, too.

The guard dropped me off at a private bathroom, where I proceeded to scrub away the makeup I'd just applied. I took in a deep breath as mascara ran down into the marble sink. I rarely did undercover work. I wasn't sure I was up to the task of pretending to be someone else for an entire conversation. But I'd handed the bad news over to family members often enough that I hoped I could bluff the right reactions.

I tried thinking of Dad — of the way I'd felt when they gave me the news. But that wasn't right. I'd been halfway expecting that news for a long time, deep down, so I wasn't surprised in the same way that happens with sudden murder.

I stared myself down in the mirror. _Come on,_ I thought. _Be upset. Be devastated. You can do this._

It was no use, though. I'd all but burned those emotions out of myself. All I had left was a cold, practical approach to death that absolutely wouldn't serve me here.

I sighed. I'd have to pretend to be numb instead. It was a valid way to grieve, but people didn't react to it as well. Television and movies had convinced people that when someone died, you had to be visibly upset. Life was weirder than fiction.

I headed out of the bathroom, and found myself taken into custody by a short-haired woman, rather than the guard that had first escorted me. She offered me a sad smile, and took me by the hand. I briefly wondered if _she_ was Madame Bianca, but I decided that she was too young, and not quite well-dressed enough.

"I'm so sorry," she told me softly. I felt a little pang of guilt, though the greater part of me knew I was here for good reasons. I nodded listlessly, thinking through the questions I wanted to ask.

"Did… did you know her?" I asked, keeping my voice very quiet.

"Yeah, honey. We're friends. I mean, um. We _were_." The thought seemed to distress her. "I'm Rachel."

"Monica," I repeated. "Do you know what happened? The police wouldn't tell me much, they just kept asking questions. But they said she was… that it wasn't an accident."

Rachel looked down. "I think she was at a hotel with a client," she admitted. "They probably didn't want to shock you. I don't know the details, but it wouldn't surprise me if she got caught in some crossfire. Tommy Tomm's a sweet guy, but he's got a lot of enemies."

_About what I figured so far,_ I thought. But at least I'd confirmed that Tommy Tomm was a client, and that Bianca knew about him. If someone wanted at the mobster while he was vulnerable, Bianca would be a great person to bribe for that opportunity.

Rachel led me to a library. It looked like something out of a different era — great big tomes lined the walls, and an antique table sat near the center, with two high-backed leather chairs on either side.

"You just have a seat," Rachel told me. "Bianca's in the middle of something, but she's gonna come as soon as she can, okay?"

I did my best to look forlorn and uncertain. "Would you mind staying with me?" I asked. I was fairly certain Bianca hadn't left me anywhere with any interesting evidence to snoop on, so keeping Rachel for further questions seemed like the better bet.

Rachel hesitated. I could see that she wanted to say yes, but she sighed and shook her head. "I wish I could," she told me. "But I've got an appointment. I'm so sorry."

I nodded dully, and she shot me another hesitant smile. "I hope you get what you need," she said.

I paused… then pulled a piece of scrap paper and a pen from my borrowed purse. "Would you mind if I got your number?" I asked.

Rachel hesitated again. She glanced toward the door. But ultimately, she stepped forward and took the pen, scribbling some numbers down. "You can call after lunch most days," she said. "I sleep late."

I nodded gratefully, and she headed for the door.

As the door closed, I considered the library again. Normally, I wouldn't be paranoid enough to consider surveillance, but in a brothel, such measures might well be merited. I shoved to my feet and drifted around the room, trying to look like a restless, aimless visitor.

The books weren't there for show. I was expecting lots of encyclopedias, but instead I found legitimately old texts in a variety of languages. I knew just enough Latin from my interactions with lawyers to recognize its presence, but not enough to translate the book titles. My high school French served me a little bit better as I noted something called _Le sommaire philosophique_. A bit of puzzling translated it out to _The Philosophical Summary_. I wasn't sure of its significance, except that it probably meant Madame Bianca was much better-read than I'd have expected of a high-class pimp.

The door opened again as I was contemplating a title in German.

There was absolutely no mistaking Madame Bianca. She was much younger than I'd expected, but every inch of her screamed of wealth and power. Her pale skin was utterly unblemished, untanned; her long auburn hair was immaculately dyed with expensive-looking highlights. Her long black dress looked like a designer-grade creation, and her tall heels were nothing I'd ever seen on a department store shelf. She carried a presence with her that utterly possessed the room the moment that she entered.

"Monica?" she asked me. Her voice was deep and pleasant. It had the capacity to be sultry, but the Madame had briefly struck a professional-but-mildly-sympathetic tone.

I stepped away from the shelf, allowing a little sheepishness onto my face. "Yes," I said. "I'm sorry. I can't seem to stay still."

Bianca smiled at me. The expression was utterly manufactured. There was something about her dark eyes that I greatly didn't like. She closed the door behind her, heels clicking sharply along the floor. "Of course, dear," she said. "Please, have a seat. You look like you could use a drink. Would you like some port?"

I headed for the chair, and sank back down into it. I shook my head. "No, thank you. I… I have to drive back."

Bianca smiled again. Her teeth were too white, I thought. "I'll pour myself a glass," she said. "And one for you — just in case you change your mind. I don't feel polite drinking alone."

I stayed quiet as she went to a small, chilled cabinet inset into one of the shelves. She poured two tiny, glittering crystal glasses of port, and sashayed over with one in each hand. She set one down in front of me, and took a sip of her own, before settling into the chair across from me.

Bianca crossed her legs in a fashion so seductive that it had to be second-nature to her, and I was immediately glad that I'd come, instead of Carmichael.

She waited for me to speak first. I cursed inwardly. It was always better to let other people guide the conversation. They gave away more that way. But Bianca seemed well aware of that concept.

"...I got a call that Jenny… that something happened to her," I said. "No one would give me any real details, though, other than… that she passed away. And that it wasn't natural causes. I thought someone here might know what happened."

Bianca took a long, considering sip of her port. Her lips were a slash of vivid, unnatural red, but she didn't leave lipstick on the rim. "I'm afraid I don't know very much either, dear," Bianca told me sympathetically. "The police haven't talked to me about it. It didn't happen here."

I nodded slowly, chewing over my approach. "If… if it was related to what she did for you… you would do something about that, wouldn't you?"

Bianca leaned her elbow onto the arm of the chair, and pressed her chin into her hand. "I am very protective of my employees," she said. "Jennifer was very good at what she did. She will be difficult to replace. I intend to do everything in my power to find the person responsible." Those dark eyes flickered over me appraisingly in a way that I didn't much like. "You're very sweet-looking, Monica," she purred. "If you wanted to help me find your sister's killer, you could work with me for a bit."

The forwardness of it flabbergasted me for a second. For someone who professed to care about her employees, Bianca had certainly put up a job offer in short order. Not to mention the sheer callousness of trying to take advantage of a grieving sister's distress. I found myself incredibly furious on Monica's behalf for a second, before I managed to remind myself that Jennifer's real sister wasn't here at all, and was in fact sleeping cozy with her husband and her two little children in some suburban house just north of us.

"I don't know if I could do that." It took work to force the words out without letting my sudden loathing for the woman color my voice. I wasn't entirely sure that I'd managed it. "What would it involve?"

Bianca considered me for a moment. "Monica," she said softly. "Would you look at me?"

I lifted my eyes to hers. In the dim light, I thought they were even blacker than before. I couldn't even see the whites of her eyes. I shuddered involuntarily. There was something really, truly _empty_ about those eyes. I felt myself being drawn into them, the longer I looked.

"Are you hiding something from me?" Bianca asked.

I felt a strange pressure on my mind. I couldn't look away. I was stuck in those pitch-black pools of darkness. I struggled beneath the weight of that gaze, trying to claw my way out of it.

_Shit,_ I thought. _Oh shit. Am I having a throwback? Is the Three-Eye getting to me?_

"What is this?" Bianca's voice sounded distant, distorted. "What are you hiding, Monica?"

Her voice twisted. There was a hiss to it now. No, there had _always_ been a hiss to it — I just hadn't noticed it before. There was a snarl to her blood-red lips. Even as I watched, it expanded, consuming her face, until all that was left was an ugly bat-like creature, its canines sharp and wicked. Strange, membranous wings stretched between the joints of its arms.

"Monica?" the voice hissed.

I stopped breathing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Five_

"_You want your hands on the drugs?" a harsh voice spat at me. "Here. You can have 'em."_

_A disgusting, herbal taste. The smell of ammonia and antifreeze. I choked and coughed. Someone was holding me down, prying open my mouth, splashing something on my face. More of the shit got on my shirt than it did inside me… but there was enough of it that it didn't really matter._

_I moved on pure muscle memory, twisting out of the grip that held me. I slammed into the man on the other side of me, bringing the full weight of my body into the punch to his kidney. The fight became a dirty, desperate blur. I took more than a few hits, ringing my head. The growing euphoria that sang in my blood dulled the pain to barely a whisper._

_I don't remember how that fight ended. All I remember is that the world was beautiful and terrible. Shadows laughed around me. The sky rumbled with thunder. Rain and snow and dying leaves rushed past, each distinct in their place in time. Gunshots and screams from years past echoed, piling atop each other in a blurred cacophony._

_Everywhere I looked, there was another ghost — another crying shadow, another smear of blood. I looked down at myself, and saw that I was bound by a fiery red rope, my wrists knotted so tightly together that my hands were pale from lack of circulation. I twisted my hands, prying at the red strands with my fingernails until my skin bled._

_The city of Chicago was one great big scream for help. It was a river full of life. It was a hiding place for wicked things that thirsted for my blood._

_But there was a bright, reassuring light in the distance, beckoning me on. I staggered toward it, step by step, knowing that my sanity depended on me reaching it. It held a promise of rest, and safety, and the most absolute love that I had ever seen before._

_The pillars of a great white temple rose before me. I climbed the steps, hands bound and bleeding, until I came before an angel of mercy, who reached out to support me with frail old hands._

"_Karrin?" said the angel. "Karrin, what happened?"_

0-0-0-0

I woke up.

It took me a second to get my bearings. It felt like time had slipped backward. My head throbbed. I recognized the hard cot, the way the thin morning sunlight streamed through the window.

Which part had been the dream? Had I just been attacked, overdosed with Three-Eye? Had I never testified, never gone back to the department, never joined Special Investigations? Or had I been in the Velvet Room, talking to Madame Bianca, fighting off some weird Three-Eye throwback?

Either way, I'd somehow ended up back at Saint Mary of the Angels.

I groaned, and rolled off the cot. My head hurt so damned bad. But why? I hadn't touched the port Bianca had offered me. One moment, I'd been there talking to her… and the next, I was losing my mind, hallucinating bat-like figures and desperately searching for safety.

I searched for the purse I'd been carrying — thankfully, it was there on the bed stand right next to me. I quickly rummaged through it, checking for the things I was most worried about. My badge, in the side pocket. My cell phone… dead. I winced. Rachel's phone number on a piece of paper. Clearly, no one had gone through the bag, if it was all still there.

I pushed my way out of the little side room. Father Forthill's voice filtered back toward me, soft and steady. I flinched. Some cowardly part of me considered finding a way out that didn't involve walking past him. He wasn't the _last_ person in the world that I wanted to see right now, but it was a pretty close tie between him and Marcone.

I buried the instinct. Forthill had saved my bacon for the second time now. Conscious Karrin might have wanted nothing to do with the old man, but Subconscious Karrin kept crawling her way here for _some_ fucked up reason. To his credit, Forthill kept putting up with it without complaint.

"Karrin!" The old priest turned as I staggered out of the hallway, into the tiny kitchen area. He reached out to steady me, concerned. "Are you all right? You're lucid now?"

I balled my fingers up into fists at his touch, but I was polite enough not to jerk away. "Yeah," I said. "What happened? I came here on my own?"

Forthill nodded slowly. "I was worried you'd been poisoned again. You were acting very similarly." He paused. "Your partner called while you were unconscious. I told him you were here. I hope that was all right."

I sighed. "Yeah, great. I get to explain the weird shit to him, too." I gave the Father a wary look. "Did I say anything about what happened this time?"

Forthill frowned. "You said there was a long shadow following you," he told me. "That there were eyes in it, watching you."

A sudden memory came to me, as clear as day.

_The shadows were watching me. They'd been watching me. There were uncountable eyes in them, all belonging to the same man. One of the shadows reached out toward my heart…_

I gasped, clutching at my chest. The fear tasted fresh, overwhelming. I had the most terrible, certain conviction that the shadows were coming for my heart.

Something about Saint Mary of the Angels dulled the fear. Even while I was awake and sober, it had a kind of quiet reassurance to it. As frightened as I was of the shadows, I was somehow equally certain that they couldn't get to me there.

It was probably some lingering leftover from my childhood. When Dad was still alive, we'd come to church like clockwork, every Sunday. Back then, Saint Mary _was_ my safe place, and Father Forthill was the closest thing to perfect that young Karrin Murphy had known.

The older me had long since been disillusioned. No one was perfect — Father Forthill included. Hell, not even God was perfect. Me and the Big Guy were on the outs, and I was damned if I was gonna apologize first. I mean… _literally_, I was damned. I was going straight to hell, according to the Father's favorite book.

That was fine by me. It was God's fucked up policies that said my dad deserved hell for committing suicide. At his funeral, I'd decided on the spot that if I had to choose between seeing my father again or going to heaven, I'd rather give God the finger and deal with the brimstone. If I'd had it my way, I never would have darkened Saint Mary's with my shadow again.

Unfortunately, the Karrin that surfaced whenever Three-Eye got involved seemed to forget my bitter aversion to the church. This was the second time I'd woken up there.

"Karrin?" The Father didn't touch me again, though I saw him suppress the instinct. "Are you all right? Do you need me to call someone else?" His concerned gaze made me look away. I didn't like the feeling it gave me.

"I'm fine," I gritted out. "Thanks for the crash space." Expressing any gratitude at all felt like pulling teeth, but I'd been raised to be polite. And anyway, I knew somewhere deep down that I only resented the Father because I'd put him on a pedestal in the first place. It wasn't his fault he was just as flawed and disappointing as every other normal human being in my life.

Forthill clearly wanted to say more. I saw him carefully searching for the right words, looking for a gentle conversation opener. I wasn't in the mood. Maybe, in some ways, I was too cowardly to deal with it.

I pushed past him for the exit.

"If you need something," Forthill said, "I'm here. Not that you _will_ need something. But if you do."

It wasn't up to his usual thoughtful conversational standards. But then, I'd put him on the spot a bit.

"I'll keep it in mind," I lied. It was the easy way out. We both knew I'd do my best to forget this place even existed as soon as I walked out the door.

As I walked out into the early morning sunlight, I really tried. I shoved at the idea of the church, struggling to refocus on the case, on the Velvet Room, on what the hell had happened there that I couldn't remember.

Instead, the image of that white, pristine temple and its merciful angel remained clear and unwavering in my head. It taunted me with the illusion of love, grace, and peace in which I'd once believed.

"Fuck you very much too," I muttered at the church. My head was still pounding like a hangover.

I raised my middle finger back toward the building as I left.

0-0-0-0

"What the hell happened last night?"

I groaned at Carmichael on my way into the station. I was still wearing the same rumpled clothes from the night before. I'd tried combing my fingers through my hair, but it was probably still a bit of a bird's nest. The last remnants of the washed-out eyeliner and mascara still touched at the corners of my eyes.

Carmichael, of course, looked almost as worn out. He'd spent the night working — and probably covering my ass with the Lieutenant.

I closed the conference door behind me tiredly. "Hell if I know," I said. "I got into the Velvet Room just fine. I even had a sit-down with the Madame. She's a real piece of work, by the way." I paused, and closed my eyes. I tried to focus on the memory — Bianca, sitting across from me, her legs crossed, her red lips curved upward. _What happened next?_

Nothing. There was a big, blank space in my memory between the Velvet Room and Saint Mary of the Angels. A few scattered, far-too-vivid images broke that emptiness, but they didn't make much sense. A big bat-like thing hissing at me. Shadows with a hundred eyes trailing after me, reaching out for my heart. It didn't make any fucking sense.

"I didn't eat or drink anything while I was there," I said. "I can't figure out how that woman could have drugged me. But somehow, I went from sitting in a chair in Bianca's library to waking up at Saint Mary, and I don't know what happened in between." I very carefully didn't mention the weird visions I'd had. I didn't want anyone thinking I was still under the effects of the Three-Eye… though some part of me worried that was _exactly_ what had gotten to me.

Carmichael whistled. "Guess there's a reason we've never managed a raid there," he said. "Maybe you ought to get a drug test, find out how she got to you. Could be useful down the line."

I grimaced. It was a good thought. But if it was the Three-Eye come back to haunt me, I wasn't sure I wanted that on paper. "I'll see if I've got time," I said, deflecting the question for the moment. "What about Marcone's guys? Did you weasel anything out of them?"

"Nothing they wanted me to know," Carmichael said. "But I can read between the lines. They're hunkering down. I think they're expecting an encore performance."

"Great," I muttered. "Just fucking great." I rubbed at my face. I'd taken some advil, but it hadn't even taken the edge off my headache. "We got a warrant for Jenny's place?"

"Jenny's place _and_ Tommy's place," Carmichael told me. "His fingerprints came in, so I took the liberty of putting in for another warrant." He shot me a lopsided smile. "Am I a good partner or what?"

I sighed. "You're the best partner in the whole precinct," I said. I laid on the flattery so obviously that he couldn't have missed it by a mile, but Carmichael just grinned wider.

"Great," he said. "Cause I need a nap. I'm tagging out."

"Fair," I muttered. "Yeah, go get some shut-eye. I'll grab some uniforms and take a look though their stuff."

0-0-0-0

I wasn't too proud to grab some Mickey D's on the way to Tommy's place. My stomach was running on empty, and I was craving something guilty and greasy. I hoped the food might help my headache, but no dice: the pounding was so bad, I was beginning to worry my body had discovered the joy of migraines. I probably wasn't going to get any relief until I got a solid eight hours of sleep — and that was still looking pretty far off.

Thankfully, our victims had been carrying their keys on them when they died, even if we hadn't had the corresponding addresses at the time. I pushed through my bad mood long enough to toss Tommy's place while a uniform watched the door. No surprise: the place was spick and span, and the trash was empty. One of Marcone's men had come along before us to clean the place, to make sure we didn't find any evidence of other crimes. They'd been thorough, too — the place stank of bleach.

I spent an hour or two searching anyway, but the whole affair eventually ended with me swearing up a storm as I stalked out past the poor kid I'd ordered to watch the door.

Fucking mobsters.

I left a few cops to canvass the surrounding apartments, to ask around about Tommy and his schedule and associates. I didn't actually figure they'd get the neighbors to talk, but that wasn't good enough reason not to try. A lot of effective detective work is more grind than glamor — by which I mean you do all the obvious, meticulous stuff, until a detail suddenly shakes loose. Even the most genius murderer is often just one person, acting under pressure; when you bring enough expert manpower to bear, it's inevitable that you'll find something they missed. The only question is whether that something is enough to go on.

I'd sent someone ahead to watch Jenny's apartment, hoping that Marcone would be at least somewhat delayed trying to track down her address. I went there next, and found the place slightly more promising.

Jenny's place was small, but it was clean and comfortable. Like many of the apartments of victims I'd been to, it was eerily lived-in. The milk in the fridge was still fresh, the blankets on the bed a little mussed. There was exactly one bowl and one spoon in the sink, waiting to be washed.

There were pictures hung up in the hallway — group shots, the sort that got sent out to friends and family around Christmas. Jennifer wasn't in them herself, but there was a blond woman who looked similar, along with a tall man and two kids. Her sister Monica, I thought. Jenny must have cared for her sister, or even just for the kids. One picture could have been an absent-minded decision, but three or four meant they mattered. I knew I had to call Monica soon, now that we'd positively identified Jennifer. The sight of those pictures made me think it was going to be a rough conversation.

I found Jenny's purse in her bedroom, with her wallet and ID inside. The photo on the driver's license matched our victim perfectly, but we'd known that would be the case. Jennifer's phone was still charging next to her bed — _that_, I considered to be a good find.

I flipped through the phone's call history, noting down names and numbers. There was a call from _Tommy_ only a few hours before the two of them had died. _Monica_ showed up more than a few times, which made sense. Someone named _Linda_ was on there quite a lot — I'd have to track her down.

I chewed on my options. Monica and Linda both seemed like good sources to ask about Jennifer's recent goings-on, but the truth was, I didn't expect anything useful out of either of them regarding the murder. Tommy Tomm had a hundred enemies, and Marcone's guys were on edge. Everything pointed at Tommy Tomm as the intended victim. I still felt like I knew far too much about Jennifer and not nearly enough about Tommy Tomm.

Well. If Marcone and his guys were holding out on me, that was fine. I had other sources I could ask.

Maybe in the process, I could find out a thing or two about Bianca and her weird-ass private club.


	6. Chapter 6

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** Susan is, by far, my absolute least favorite character in the entirety of the Dresden Files. But it's not her fault, I've decided. She's written like a moron. Consider this my attempt at rehabilitating her character.

_Chapter Six_

Thank god my source was a cheap date.

I peered approvingly around the pub she'd chosen. It wasn't _cheap_ cheap, mind you. McAnally's was a basement bar with a low ceiling and a few rickety fans, but it had a certain hole-in-the-wall quality to it. I could smell the wood-burning stove as I headed up to the bar. I was a little surprised to find it open this time of day, but it had the feel of a community bar — I recognized a lunch crowd when I saw one.

I ordered a pint of Guinness, and got something clearly home-brewed instead. Beggars with splitting headaches can't be choosers, so I headed over to one of the tables against the wall and nursed the drink while I waited. Maybe it was the beer, or just the atmosphere, but the pain in my head lessened just a little bit.

The woman I was waiting on showed up about ten minutes after I'd sit down. She was a dark-skinned, brown-haired woman, with a few inches on me and a whole lot more appeal. Even in business attire, Susan Rodriguez turned heads. I envied her legs, but not her high heels.

Susan smiled brightly, and click-clacked over toward my table. She threw herself into the chair opposite me. "Well," she said fondly. "If it isn't my favorite grumpy cop. You're looking even grumpier than usual today, too. One of Mac's beers should help with that. He's kind of like a miracle-worker."

I frowned to emphasize my mood, but Susan was right — the beer _was_ fantastic, now that I was of a mind to pay attention to it. I filed the pub away in my head for a rainy day, and vowed I'd come back to try the drinks when I was in a better place to appreciate them. "I'll pay for lunch," I told her, though I'd already implied it over the phone. "I'm afraid I can't give you any hot tips today. This one's sensitive, and I haven't told next-of-kin yet. But if you can do me a solid, I'll keep it in mind for later."

Susan nodded. She knew I was good for my favors. I trusted, in turn, that she'd keep her mouth shut when I really needed it. That was a rare quality in a reporter. It was downright shocking for a woman who worked at a rag one step up from the tabloids. "I take it you've been working a day or two already," she observed. She didn't point out the big black circles under my eyes or the clothes that were starting to look a little _too_ well-worn. She was classy like that.

"Yeah," I said. "And getting nowhere. Well. Maybe _somewhere_, but nowhere I want to be, and nowhere useful." I jerked my head toward the bar. "Let's go grab some food. God knows when I'll get the chance to eat again."

Susan ordered a steak sandwich and fries, and took back a pint of the same beer I'd been given. Now that I looked, I wasn't sure the bar sold any other kind. I shrugged, asked for another of what she was having, and set some cash down on the bar. The tall, graying man behind the counter silently counted out my change, and I realized that I _still_ hadn't heard him say a word. He'd grunted every once in a while, in a general, affirmative manner, but that was about it.

Maybe he was having a shitty day too.

Susan and I watched as the bartender fried up our food on the woodstove right behind the bar. I knew it would have been polite to try and make small talk while we waited, but I just didn't have it in me. Eventually, the bartender slid our food out to us, and we headed back to our table near the wall.

I slid back into my chair, and considered Susan seriously over bites of sandwich. "You've got your ear to the ground," I said. "You heard anything brewing around Marcone and his outfit?"

Susan let out a breath. "Damn," she said. I saw the hunger in her eyes, and knew it wasn't just the food in front of her. She knew I was working a case related to the mafia now. That made for good print. But she swallowed down her curiosity with _great _effort. "Yeah, I know something. I'm sure the timing isn't a coincidence." Susan lowered her voice. "There's been a _lot_ of Three-Eye going around lately. Marcone's not a fan. He's started taking out dealers."

I shivered in spite of myself. Susan shot me a careful look. My history with Three-Eye was far from secret. In fact, Susan had published some of the most righteous screeds on my behalf when I went to testify — it was how we'd first met. Say what you will about tabloids, but lots of people read them. I often suspected the only reason I still had a job was because Susan had riled up so many people and made it impossible to sweep me under the rug.

"I thought Three-Eye was a niche market," I said. "I didn't realize there was enough volume available to threaten anyone, let alone Johnny Marcone."

"The volume picked up," Susan told me. "A lot. Whatever you ran into way back when, I think it must have been experimental. Someone's refined the process, and they're mass-manufacturing it now."

"Damn," I muttered. "How come we haven't picked up on this yet?"

"I can't imagine how you _wouldn't_," Susan said. "Last week got pretty exciting. Some street-level dealers disappeared all at once, a few of their customers got the living hell scared out of them…" She paused uncertainly. I knew the same thought had occurred to both of us.

"...Marcone's rats," I said. "They've slowed down their paperwork, dragged cases in the wrong direction. He's got to be burning through a _lot_ of influence, even for him." I shook my head. "This is a big deal. I should have figured as much, but now I know for sure."

Susan chewed at her lip. "What do you think he's doing?" she asked me. "Why go to so much trouble to keep this quiet?"

I leaned back in my chair. God damn, I was tired. But this revelation, small as it felt, was just enough to get my brain going again. _Progress. Hallelujah._ I remembered Marcone's conversation with me. _He wanted me to call him first. I'm probably not the only person who got offered that deal. _"I don't think he's _just_ got his rats delaying things. He has them looking all over town. I don't think he knows who's behind the Three-Eye. That's gotta have him freaking out."

The whole thing made so much more sense now. Marcone was trying to use the department to bring down his newest rival. He was pointing us like a weapon. _We are allies,_ he'd told me. Marcone knew about my previous run-ins with Three-Eye. I hadn't been in a mood to hear him make his pitch, but he had to know I'd figure out the connection at some point. He thought there was a good chance I'd swallow my disgust and work with him, if it meant getting the drug that had fucked me over off the street for good.

I tested the thought carefully. Was Marcone right? Did I feel any desire to call him, to offer a grudging one-time deal?

_Nah._ He was still pond-scum. Much as I hated Three-Eye, the revelation of its involvement only made me more determined to grind my way to the bottom of this case myself.

Susan sighed. "You have that look," she said. "Please tell me you're not about to insert yourself into the middle of a gang war, Karrin."

"I'm not gonna put myself in the middle of a gang war," I told her. "...on purpose, anyway." I quickly changed the subject. "Hey, what can you tell me about the Velvet Room?"

Susan eyed me skeptically for a moment. "Karrin?" she pressed.

"Hey," I told her. "I don't have a deathwish." Carmichael's comment echoed in my head, and I realized it had been rattling around in there along with everything else from the last day. I frowned. "I'm not trying to get killed, but if the evidence drags me somewhere dangerous, I'm gonna do my job. Marcone doesn't keep the streets clean, god damnit. He just makes it easier for people to ignore the trash."

Susan sighed. "One of these days, you're going to have to learn to pick your battles," she told me.

I shrugged. "I pick my battles," I said. I thought specifically of Lieutenant Walker, sitting frustrated in his office. I could have gone to Internal Affairs, warned them he was cutting corners and leaning on people to close cases by any means necessary. But I didn't have any evidence, and I knew there was no way I'd keep my job if I went hard at the Lieutenant of the only division that would still take me. All I had to do was keep people honest and wait for Walker's career to implode on its own.

Susan raised an eyebrow, delicately nibbling on a fry. "See?" she said. "I can see you strategizing."

I rolled my eyes. "I pick my battles," I repeated. Then: "The Velvet Room, Susan?"

Susan finally gave up, and accepted the change of direction. "I can tell you lots of things about the Velvet Room," she said. "But you won't like them."

I groaned. The tabloid Susan worked for, the Chicago _Arcane_, wasn't entirely full of shit a hundred percent of the time. But maybe fifty percent of the time, it was _totally_ full of shit. "Don't tell me," I said. "Bianca's an alien?"

Susan gave me a deeply offended look. "Karrin," she said. "I know you don't believe in this stuff, but I do. If you don't want to hear it, you can just say so, and not make fun of me."

I sighed. "You're right," I said. "I'm sorry. I'm in a really shitty headspace. You deserve better."

Susan shifted in her seat, somewhat mollified. "Anyway. Aliens don't exist, Karrin. Bianca's a vampire."

I closed my eyes, and slowly — very slowly — forced myself to count to ten.

_Susan's a nice woman, she's just got weird hobbies, leave it be._

"Okay," I said.

"She is," Susan told me. "She never comes out during the day. She hasn't ever aged that I can tell. There's rumors that she drinks blood from her girls, that she can hypnotize you if you look her in the eyes—"

"She what?" I snapped back to attention. Hard.

Susan raised her eyebrows. "Drinks blood," she repeated. She must have figured that was the most relevant part.

I shifted back in my seat. _Don't,_ I told myself. _This is how people end up falling down the rabbit hole into crazy conspiracies. You hear one coincidental detail and get hooked._

"All right," I said. "It's probably not relevant. But thanks."

Susan wrinkled her nose. "You owe me a scoop," she said.

"I never forget," I reminded her. I was tempted to drain the rest of my glass, but too much of a good thing would compound with my headache and my too-few hours of rest, and I knew I had to drive. Reluctantly, I pushed the glass away, still half-full. _Damn._ That really was good beer.

"Yeah," Susan agreed. "I know." Her dark eyes followed me as I stood up from my chair. "But you've got to be alive to give me a story."

I rolled my eyes, and collected my coat. Susan wrote sensational stories every week. Naturally, she had a certain flair for the dramatic. "I'm a big girl. I've been doing this a while now." I patted her on the shoulder as I passed. "I know when I'm in over my head. I promise, I'm not there yet."

0-0-0-0

I spent a while in the car, looking down at Rachel's phone number.

She probably wouldn't answer, I reflected. It was after lunch now, but I couldn't imagine I'd left the Velvet Room on good terms with Bianca.

Then again, what did I have to lose?

I punched the number into my phone and hit the call button.

_Ring._

Vampires. God, that was over the top.

_Ring._

While I was at it, hypnotism was a crock too.

_Ring._

The phone picked up.

"_Hello?_" The voice on the other end was still a little sleepy. It was hard to tell, but I thought it sounded like the woman I'd talked to the night before.

"Hey," I said. "Rachel?"

A long pause ensued. I thought I could _hear_ her thinking about hanging up. I seized the moment, feeling oddly urgent. "Rachel," I said. "What happened last night?"

"_I can't talk to you,_" said the voice on the other end of the phone. She sounded scared. But I noticed that she didn't hang up.

"You can," I told her. I remembered her reactions at Bianca's mansion. She was responsive to a soft touch. "Please. I don't remember anything. Did I get myself into trouble?"

"_...please don't call me again,_" Rachel said. "_Bianca knows who you are, Detective. I don't know why she let you leave, but I don't think she'll do it a second time, if you keep doing this._" She paused. _"I don't want something bad to happen to you. But I can't help you._"

The line went dead.


	7. Chapter 7

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Seven_

I tried calling twice more. Rachel didn't pick up again.

I spent a little bit idling in front of the pub, staring down at my phone. The better part of me was suggesting I ought to just leave well enough alone. I'd walked into the Velvet Room and walked out again, in spite of Marcone's warnings. I was fairly sure that Jennifer Stanton had been a secondary victim, caught in the crossfire, and not relevant to the motive. Bianca's connection to this case was growing more and more tenuous by the second.

But that blank stretch of memory was haunting me. At the end of the day, no matter how bad things got, I'd always survived on the conviction that at least I still had control of _myself._ Being dosed with Three-Eye had shaken that foundation; now, on top of this weirdness with hearts jumping out of bodies, losing my memory for an entire night was starting to make things look awfully wobbly.

_You don't have time for an existential crisis,_ I told myself. The first forty-eight hours were almost up, and if Carmichael and Susan were right, it was sounding likely there might be another murder if I didn't solve this soon.

I also needed to find the time to visit Monica Sells. Maybe she was only tangential to the case, but she deserved better than to hear about her sister's death secondhand. Besides, I felt like I owed her for stealing her name, however briefly.

I called up Carmichael.

"_Nngh,_" he answered dimly.

"Wakey-wakey, sunshine," I told him. "I gave you a whole six hours. I've got good news and bad news."

"_Good news?_" he said."_We still get that?_"

"I've got a list of people who talked to Jennifer pretty frequently in the past few days. If she had any inkling of what was going on, she might have said something to one of them. I'm not expecting anything from that angle, but at least it's there." I paused. "Bad news is that we're probably dealing with a scuffle over drug franchises. I've got a source that tells me Marcone started killing Three-Eye dealers last week. This might have been retribution."

Carmichael groaned. _"Which means it'll probably escalate,"_ he said. _"Did you find anything useful at Tommy's place?"_

"Not a damn thing. It was scrubbed by the time we got there. But I've got to imagine that if this was related to the Three-Eye stuff, Tommy wasn't just a random target who happened to work for Marcone. He was an enforcer — maybe he killed one of those dealers himself, or threatened someone on Marcone's behalf." I chewed on that angle. "Marcone seems to be working overtime keeping his little gang war quiet, but _someone_ in Narcotics probably knows something and isn't averse to talking. I'm still persona non grata, so you get to play liaison again."

"_Are we gonna talk about the obvious here, Murph?"_ Carmichael asked me.

I set my jaw. Even over the phone, it was easy to read between the lines. "We're not calling Marcone unless it's to bring him into interview," I said.

Carmichael was quiet for a second. _"If another body drops, and we could've done something…"_

I closed my eyes. I understood the sentiment. Jennifer Stanton had probably been an innocent bystander. It wasn't a foregone conclusion that this violence would stay exclusively between Marcone and his new rival.

"...I'll call him," I said. "But I'm not promising him anything. Marcone started all this shit, as far as I'm concerned. If he wants to stop more innocent blood, that's on him. I'm not gonna offer him special favors to do the right thing."

"_It's worth a try, Murph. He gave us Jennifer's name. Maybe you'll catch him in a generous mood."_

I shook my head. "Men like Marcone are only generous when they're buying you. But I appreciate your totally groundless faith in humanity, Ron." I managed a faint smile against the headache. "All right. I'll get it over with. You go chat up Narcotics. Bring presents if you have to. They like booze."

"_I know how to schmooze and booze,"_ Carmichael laughed. _"Catch you on the flip side, Murph."_

0-0-0-0

The woman that answered the phone number on the card Marcone had given me was obviously _not _Marcone. But when I gave her my name, she told me I could drop in on her boss at the Varsity around six in the evening. She didn't say it outright, but she heavily implied that Marcone was doing me a big favor, and that I'd better treat the meeting appropriately. I pretended to be impressed.

It was just getting toward one o' clock, so I figured I had the time to knock out one of the nastier bits of business still hanging over my head in the meantime.

I don't know anyone who likes delivering bad news. I'm sure someone out there must enjoy it, given the sheer breadth of human depravity — but if so, I haven't met them. I went through the details of Jennifer's death in my head, trimming down the more gruesome stuff and rephrasing it with euphemisms.

I pulled into the driveway of a cute little two-story house in the suburbs, parking my department car behind a minivan. The place was white picket fence material, like something out of an old sitcom. It even had a basketball goal put up above the garage door.

I instantly felt weird about that house. I wasn't sure why. But I couldn't help but notice that my headache, previously somewhat calmed by the beer at McAnally's, had come raging back worse than ever. I fumbled in the glove compartment for more painkillers. Some distant part of me was beginning to worry I might fry my liver with the number I was taking, but I didn't have much of a choice — I couldn't remember the last time I'd been in so much physical misery.

I dry-swallowed the little pills and forced myself out of the car, heading up toward the door. I knocked there, loud but polite.

No one answered. I glanced back toward the minivan in the driveway. It was possible it was just an extra vehicle, but I doubted it. If Monica's husband was at work, that meant two separate cars, which was already an embarrassment of wealth for the area. Three cars just struck me as too much for a family in this income-bracket.

I knocked again, a little more loudly. Maybe Monica was in the shower, or doing dishes.

I caught a flicker of curtains in the window to my left, out of the corner of my eye. I frowned. Maybe she thought I was selling something. "Monica Sells?" I called out. "I'm Detective Karrin Murphy, with the Chicago PD. I just need to talk to you for a bit." I held up my badge. "You're not in trouble or anything," I added, just in case that spooked her more.

The door slowly opened.

Monica wasn't much older than I was, though she looked about as tired as I felt — that was troubling, given the last few nights I'd had. Her dirty blond hair was pulled back beneath a bandana, and her flannel shirt and jeans had fresh water stains where she'd wiped her hands on them. She'd probably been cleaning when I had first knocked at the door.

Her manner was closed-off. Her arms were crossed over her chest in a way that made her look very small. It reminded me uncannily of the way I'd intentionally portrayed her at the Velvet Room. She tried very hard not to meet my eyes.

"Hello," she said. Her voice was so soft that I had to lean forward just to hear her properly. "Can… can I help you?"

The uneasy feeling in my stomach intensified. My instincts were trying to tell me something, but I was too tired to pin it down just yet.

"Can I come in?" I asked. "I need to talk to you about your sister, Jennifer."

I didn't want to break the news to her while she was stuck standing uncomfortably in the doorway. But, as was so often the case, Monica caught where I was going almost instantly. Detectives only show up on your doorstep out of the blue for a handful of reasons. Monica's jaw trembled. "She's dead, isn't she?" she asked me.

I stifled a sigh. So much for sitting her down first.

"I'm afraid so," I confirmed. "Why don't we sit down somewhere and talk?"

Monica hesitated. My instincts were still telling me something was wrong, so I pushed the door gently open and stepped past her into the house. I knew she was too skittish to stop me, regardless of the reason.

The house was spotless. I wondered at that. Two kids didn't make it easy to keep a spotless home. I saw a vacuum cleaner still sitting out next to the stairs, and a bucket with a mop. Even the baseboards near the door were freshly scrubbed.

Monica was deep-cleaning. Not the bleach-the-crime-scene sort of cleaning Marcone had sent his men to do — no, this was stress-cleaning, nerves. Either the woman herself had a mental disorder, or else she was reacting to a heavy dose of recent pressure. Cleaning is often a last-ditch way to exercise control over your environment when things feel like they're spiralling.

I headed for the living room in front of me, noting details, searching for more clues as to what had pinged my radar as I settled into the couch. The house was exceptionally quiet, and I remembered that the kids were probably still at school.

Monica settled down across from me, quiet. She fretted with her hands in her lap, still full of nervous energy. There were tears gathering in her eyes, but she hadn't spilled them yet.

This was a woman already overwhelmed. Her sister's death was just the cherry on top.

I waited a bit longer, expecting questions, but Monica didn't speak. She'd shut down. I cleared my throat, and started answering the questions I normally got, as though she'd volunteered them. "Jennifer died two nights ago, as far as we can tell. Right now, it seems likely she was murdered. We weren't immediately able to confirm her identity at first, which is why it took a while to come and tell you."

"Do I have to… do anything?" Monica asked in a small voice. She'd focused in on that immediately. Her brain was sidestepping the matter of grief, going right for the things she needed to _do_, to put on her list. Given her stress-cleaning, the reaction didn't surprise me. She was kicking her mental breakdown down the road like a can.

"Her autopsy is already done," I said. "You'll need to officially claim her body at the morgue, if you want to make funeral arrangements. As her closest living family, you're the executor of her estate, but a lot of her things probably won't be released until we're sure there's no more evidence to be found. We'll give you a call when that's the case."

I considered Monica dispassionately. My brain had already put a wall between the two of us. I wanted to empathize with her, to tell her I'd been through it, that bad things happened and she was allowed to react any way she needed, no matter what people expected. But years of this work had deeply-ingrained the instinct to keep myself at arm's length. If I gave up my distance — if I let myself feel for her — I'd be useless for the rest of the day. The last of those precious forty-eight hours would go to waste while I lingered over the blurred lines between her pain and mine.

"I can give you the number of someone who can help walk you through this," I told her. "For now, I could really use the answers to a few questions. I don't want to make things hard on you, but I do have to tell you that time matters in an investigation like this."

Monica nodded dully. "That's okay," she said. Tears still glimmered in her eyes, but she was slowly regaining control of herself. "Please, just ask."

I took a deep breath. "Did you know that Jennifer was a sex worker?" I asked.

"Yes," Monica said. "We argued about it more than once."

"Did you talk to Jennifer recently?"

"No." The answer jarred me from my script like a record-skip.

Monica's number had been listed several times on Jennifer's phone. They hadn't been short conversations either, for the most part. Why would she lie about that?

"Are you sure?" I said. "Not even a quick hello?"

Monica hesitated. She was forcing herself to think through a lie. It was purposeful deception, not some kind of stress-induced forgetfulness. I let it play out for now. The lies that people choose can reveal a lot.

"...we might have talked a little bit, now that I think about it," Monica admitted. "I was very distracted. Billy's been acting up in school, and it's taking up a lot of my attention." She let a few of the tears go now. They were real tears, but I knew she'd specifically let herself lose control as a distraction. "I'm sorry, Detective. I might not be able to answer your questions after all. Can… can you come by another time, please?"

I embraced that cold clarity more strongly than before now. I couldn't let myself react the way a normal human being is supposed to react, when faced with grief. "I'm afraid I really can't," I told her. "Monica — I know you care about your sister. If you lie to me, even about things you think are unrelated, I can't do my job and find who did this. I promise, whatever you're worried about, I'm not going to judge you. Even if it's something illegal, you're not the subject of my investigation, and I'm not going to prosecute you."

Monica bit her lip. She was scared, I could tell. The whole house just stank of fear. I felt it keenly, like I was soaking in it, but I didn't know where the intuition came from.

_Long sleeves. Tired. Scared. House too clean._ My brain flickered through the signs. I reached out to grasp at Monica's wrist. She flinched instinctively. I knew what I would find even before I rolled up the edge.

Bruises dotted her arm, where someone else's fingers had dug into her skin. A few old, shiny red burns lingered on the crease of her elbow. _Cigarette burns_, I thought. A deep, frigid anger rose up inside me.

Still, Monica said nothing. The tears on her face kept coming.

"I'm going to guess at this," I said slowly. "And you can just give me a yes or a no, all right?" I let the sleeve slide down again. "You were getting ready to leave your husband. Jennifer promised to help you. The two of you were planning it out — that's what all the calls were about." I paused. "She died at a very bad time for you. You're not sure if you can do it now, without her help. And if your husband finds out, you know things will get worse."

Monica swallowed hard. "Please leave," she begged me. "You really can't be here if he comes home."

The lamp in the living room flickered uncertainly. Monica froze, her eyes glazed in terror. "You need to leave," she said again, more urgently this time. She stood up and headed for the door, clearly hoping I would follow.

I felt my teeth grind together. The anger I felt was deep, and utterly impotent. This wasn't my job. _Jennifer_ was my job. But god damn, I wanted to stick around long enough to beat the shit out of that man.

_And then what?_ I'd done my time as a beat cop. Domestic disturbances were the bread and butter of that life. If I took out my anger on Victor Sells, it wouldn't change Monica's circumstances. If anything, it might make matters worse. She needed long-term help, the sort of support that a family member could provide — the help that Jennifer had been offering, before she died.

Monica had been willing to leave. That was the biggest step. It was easy for abuse victims to feel helpless, to force themselves into denial so they didn't have to face the sheer scope of their situation. But if Monica was willing to set up plans once, maybe she could do it again.

I went after her, more to continue talking than to leave the house. "I can put you in touch with a women's shelter," I told her. "They'll take you and the kids. It's an easier process than you think."

Monica shook her head quickly. She already had the door open again. "You don't know what you're talking about," she said. "I appreciate that you want to help, but you're just… you don't know."

"So tell me," I said. I tried to keep my voice even, to keep the anger from seeping out. I wasn't sure how well I was succeeding.

Monica turned to face me. "I would like you to leave now," she emphasized.

I took in a breath. _She's got a lot on her plate,_ I reminded myself. As much as I wanted to press the matter, it probably wasn't a good time. If I kept leaning on her, she'd definitely never ask for help.

"I'm leaving you my card," I told her. I pulled one from my wallet and forced it into her hand. "In case you think of something relevant about Jennifer. But if you want help, any time of night… you just call, okay?" I searched her face. "Whatever kind of help you need. It doesn't have to be police at your door."

"Yes. Fine." Monica shoved the card into her jeans pocket. I hoped she didn't intend to throw it away as soon as I was gone… but at the end of the day, there wasn't much I could do about it.

She closed the door in my face.


	8. Chapter 8

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Eight_

I was not in the right mood to deal with Johnny Marcone.

I knew it even as I drove back into the city. Anger still sat like a stone in my gut, so strong it made me nauseous. I couldn't take that anger out on Victor Sells, so it went searching for another equally-deserving victim. Maybe another overly-controlling man who terrorized the people around him and liked to threaten violence when he didn't get his way.

All the painkillers had taken the edge off my headache, but I could feel it just beneath the surface, thudding at my skull. Worse — I was starting to see things. There were faint shadows crawling at the corners of my eyes. Every time I moved my gaze from my car's mirrors, I felt like the darkness behind me was shifting, sliding just out of view. Those shadows did not like me, and I sure as hell didn't like being in a car with them. It took a whole lot of willpower for me to ignore them as the subtle hallucination I knew they were.

"_Meddling bitch."_

The hissed words made me jerk the steering wheel in surprise. Someone honked their horn. I swerved to the side of the road and hit the brakes, my knuckles white on the wheel.

I stared into the car mirror. One of those shadows had come more fully into view now. It looked like a dark man sitting in my back seat. I couldn't make out his features — I wasn't even sure that he _had_ any. He was a silhouette in 3D, dribbling shadows like a blurry photograph. I _knew_ he hadn't been in the car when I first pulled out of Monica's driveway.

I pulled my gun from my shoulder holster, and turned to train it carefully on the figure in my car.

The shadow man laughed. _"Meddling, but incompetent,"_ he said. _"Tell me: what are you going to do with that toy?"_

Most people, when faced with a gun, show at least a little bit of wariness. The shadow man's voice dripped with contempt, though. And why _should_ he have been afraid? He was a walking, talking shadow. My eyes were pretty clear on that point, as insane as it was. You can't shoot shadows.

"Who are you?" I asked. I kept my gun pointed at him, though some part of me knew it was useless.

"_Someone beyond your power,"_ he said. _"I am a force of nature. I am the earth beneath your feet, the storm overhead. I am the darkness in every corner. You should be careful chasing shadows, Detective. You won't like what happens if you catch one."_

Up until that moment, I'd been convinced I was going crazy. But weirdly, it was the gleeful, overly-poetic speech that made me discard that idea. It was so arrogant and cheesy that it _had_ to be real. It was a carefully-rehearsed claptrap, but it _still_ fell flat, because the speaker behind it had zero charisma and no sense of dramatic timing.

_Shit,_ I thought. _I'm trapped in my car with a dorky B-list villain._

It didn't mean he was any less dangerous. Self-important, overly-dramatic assholes drive a surprising amount of our crime rate. The movies have really given criminals a glammed-up reputation that they don't particularly deserve.

"You're behind Tommy and Jennifer's murders," I said. I might have asked a more open-ended question, but I had a feeling if I said something like _what do you want_, he'd just devolve into more corny speeches.

"_People who play with things they don't understand deserve to get hurt,"_ the shadow man hissed. _"This is your only warning. You should learn from their mistakes."_

I stared down the shadow in my back seat. I didn't know what he was capable of doing to me, right then and there. Maybe he _could_ reach into my chest and explode my heart. Much as it injured my pride, I had to tell him at least a little of what he wanted to hear.

"Warning received," I said. Then, because I don't know when to stop, I added: "I guess I should stay away from Three-Eye, too? Will you get pissed off at me if I investigate the drugs?"

Another hiss came from the back seat, and I wondered for a second if I'd gone too far prodding him for information. But shadow man or not, this guy wasn't necessarily the sharpest tool in the shed.

"_Leave the Three-Eye alone,"_ he said. _"If you get in my way, I will tear your heart from your chest."_

That confirmed a bunch of my assumptions. The shadow man had killed Tommy and Jennifer. He was also behind Three-Eye. I didn't know how he was talking to me right now, but he'd put himself in a bind without realizing it. Now that I could talk to him, I could get information out of him. That made this an interrogation — a _dangerous_ interrogation, but an interrogation nonetheless.

I knew how to run an interrogation.

"I'm terrified of you," I told him. "Why isn't Marcone scared, too?" I tried to amp up the fear in my voice. There was definitely a pounding in my heart, though I could feel myself taking control of the situation.

"_Because he is a fool,"_ the shadow man spat. _"I will crush him soon enough."_

The shadow man knew who Marcone was. Check. He _was_ gunning for the mob boss. Check.

I had to phrase my next bit _very _carefully. This was the part of the interrogation where I had to sympathize with the suspect, make myself into a kind of ally. _You had your reasons, anyone would do what you did,_ was the usual script.

"So Tommy Tomm was a message," I said. "And Marcone is refusing to listen. I gotta say, I don't think anyone will miss him if _he_ dies next. You'd be doing the city a favor."

"_He will die when the time is right,"_ the shadow man said coldly. He seemed mollified by my little bit of kowtowing. Ego-stroking was going to take me far, as long as I didn't overdo it.

"Could the right time be tonight?" I joked. "I'll get a good night's sleep that way." That was a dangerous one — but I had a suspicion, and I needed it confirmed. I felt myself start to sweat, and hoped I hadn't just casually encouraged premeditated murder.

The shadow man didn't respond. I thought I felt a split-second's hesitation from him…

...and then he was gone.

I let out my breath.

"Not tonight, then," I muttered.

The smart thing to do after Marcone had started killing Three-Eye dealers would have been to kill the mobster directly. Absolutely nothing would have sent a stronger message than ending the man at the top of the food chain. But the shadow man hadn't done that — instead, he'd gone after Tommy Tomm, a man perpendicular to Marcone. His heart-exploding trick, whatever it was, had limitations. There was some reason he couldn't use it on Marcone before now, and another reason — maybe the same reason — why he couldn't kill Marcone tonight.

That gave me a little room to maneuver. Not a _lot_ of room, especially since I didn't know what those limitations were. But it meant the shadow man was far from all-powerful, no matter what he wanted me to think.

_You just interrogated a shadow,_ my rational brain informed me belatedly.

I groaned, and pressed my forehead to the top of my steering wheel. I'd been hoping to avoid grappling with that revelation for at least a little bit longer.

I wanted to deny it, put it all down to my headache, my previous brush with hallucinogens, the fact that I was still running on a few hours of sleep and a lot of caffeine. But I knew what I'd seen. I'd gotten real answers, though they were still vague in places. I had a voice and a personality to put to my murderer.

_Marcone knows about this,_ I thought. _All of this._ He hadn't been talking in metaphors yesterday at all.

I was badly lacking in information. But Marcone had that information, and I knew the shadow man was having trouble getting at him. That meant the meeting I had with him tonight was even more important than before.

0-0-0-0

I had a few hours left before I had to be at the Varsity. I needed to use that time to calm down. Hell, I could probably do with smelling less awful, while I was at it. I decided to head home and grab a shower and a change of clothing to clear my head.

After Dad's death, Grandma Murphy had moved into our house to help take care of things. The old woman was famous for her various fantastic vices, so I'd actually be hard-pressed to tell you which one actually killed her, in the end. What I can tell you is that she died drunk, with a fresh cigarette between her lips, and probably with a dirty story on her mind. As a result, while I'd now moved back into the house in which I'd grown up, a lot of the leftover stuff was… well, _outdated_ is a generous word. The curtains were a special kind of hellish yellow that matched the slowly withering wallpaper. I kept meaning to wash down the walls to see if half of that color was just the nicotine coating, but somehow I'd never quite found the time.

Walking into my own house after around thirty-six hours away from it did at least a little bit to ease my mind. I wanted to take a long shower, to let the heat and relaxation jog my brain, but being naked and without my gun left me feeling too exposed. I hurried up the process instead, and strapped my holster back on as soon as I could.

The shower left me feeling clean and strangely focused. I wasn't sure that was a good thing — it was the high just before a crash. I felt like I was up in the clouds, like my brain was hovering a foot above where it should have been.

The mirror was fogged up, but I saw a flash of red in it that shouldn't have been there. As I reached out to wipe at it with a towel, I saw that red rope twisted around my wrist. I stopped. My pulse jumped into my throat.

The headache I'd had all day had given way, opening up into an airy, floating sensation. I heard laughter in the walls. I saw the blurry figures of the past moving past me. My father stood behind me, staring into the mirror with a haunted expression. My mother's voice called for me from down the hall. _"Karrie!"_ she said. _"Come on upstairs, it's time!"_

I stumbled out of the bathroom. The rope on my wrists chafed in more ways than one. Now that I was aware of it again, it felt like a weight on my soul. I wanted it _gone_, but the more I tugged at it, the tighter it seemed to get.

My mother's figure stood near the attic door. I barely remembered what she looked like without the help of old photos, but for some reason this phantom of her was clear as day, as real as if she were standing next to me. Her blond hair was longer than mine, just past her shoulders. Her eyes were an airy blue, sparkling with love and humor. She was wearing a tie-dye blouse — her favorite, I think — and bell-bottom jeans. _"Let's go say hello,"_ she said with a smile. She offered me her hand.

I blinked, and she was gone — swept away by the other memories of the house. That's what they were, I thought. Memories. Impressions left by the past.

I pulled down the attic stairs. It was a bit of a struggle against the ropes that bound my wrists, but eventually the wood creaked and the ladder descended.

The attic was dusty. I hadn't been up here since I'd first moved in. Even then, it had only been long enough to store some of my grandmother's things. I sneezed a few times as the dust swirled around me. But over in the corner, an old trunk glowed with electric energy from beneath a pile of family history. I headed toward it, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu.

I dug away the old papers and albums that currently lay atop it. Something was trying to surface. I _felt_ it scratching at the bottom of my conscious mind.

I'd seen the trunk before. It wasn't anything special — or at least, it _hadn't_ been anything special before. Now, though, I could smell sharp, tangy ozone coming off of it. I could see tiny sparks of electricity slithering over it in some sort of pattern.

I reached out to open it. It probably wasn't the best idea. And to be honest, if I had been in my right mind, I might not have done it. But that _scratch, scratch_ at the bottom of my mind was insistent, and I felt like I was on the verge of understanding something of life-altering importance.

The little electrical sparks gathered warningly near my hand as I touched the trunk… but they slid off my skin like water, pacified by some unknown force. I flipped the lid to reveal the inside. It was full of old, yellowed packing peanuts. I could see a number of objects buried beneath them, wrapped in cloth.

I pulled out the first bundle. It was small and light, tied up in a black silk handkerchief. As I undid the knot, I felt another spark against my skin. The thick bracelet inside was actually made of multiple strands of silver — a careful celtic weave. It crawled with the memory of protective power. I wasn't sure how I knew that, but I did. It was a protective charm… or at least, it _had_ been. Now it was more like an empty vessel, or a run-down battery.

I'd seen my mother wear that bracelet.

A gust of air blew through the packing peanuts as though the trunk had sneezed. I stumbled back, blinking against the shower of foam. As I moved forward to see what had caused it, I saw one of the other silk bundles, its knot half-undone. Soft blue light filtered through the fabric.

I set the bracelet aside on top of an old copy of Monopoly, and picked the other bundle, to finish undoing the knot. The black silk fell away to reveal a polished white skull. It glowed in my hand with a gentle blue light.

"What the hell?" I mumbled.

The skull's eye sockets lit up.

"Oh man, _finally!"_ said the skull. "Hey there, kid! Long time, no see!"


	9. Chapter 9

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Nine_

I dropped the skull.

"Oof," it said.

_What the hell. What the hell. What the hell._

I belatedly realized I was muttering out loud.

"Man, you grew up to be a klutz," the voice inside the skull whined. "You gotta be more careful with my anchor, I don't exactly have a bunch of extras laying around."

"What the _hell?"_ I said again, because my mouth seemed to be stuck on endless loop.

The skull paused. The little orange fires in its eye sockets flickered in my general direction. "Wow," it said. "You don't look so hot, kid. What happened to your Third Eye?"

That snapped me out of my loop. I snatched the skull from the floor. "What do you know about Three-Eye?" I demanded.

"Oh come _on,_" the skull sighed. "What's it been, years? Decades? Not even a _hey, Uncle Bob, great to see you, sorry I left you in a trunk all this time?_" The eye sockets flickered again. "Where'd your mom get off to, kid? At least _she_ knows better than to manhandle my anchor."

First, I'd interrogated a shadow. Now I was interrogating a skull. It didn't escape my notice that I had way less control over the second interrogation than the first. Bob the skull was turning out to be a flighty subject, and I was feeling a little too out of my mind to rein him in.

"My mom?" I said.

Even as I thought of her, her image blurred past me, reaching down to pick something up. An echo of the skull in my hands rested in her palms._ "Hello, Bob,"_ she said with a smile. _"This is Karrin. Say hello to Bob, Karrie."_

I didn't remember that. I knew in a crazy, certain way that it had happened. The image wouldn't be there if it hadn't happened. But I _didn't remember it._

"Yeah, okay," Bob was saying. "It's not your fault, I get it. You're busted. I don't know how you managed to get your Third Eye cracked like that, but you really gotta get it under control. I can basically _see_ your brains melting out of your head."

"My Third Eye?" I said dimly. "Not Three-Eye?"

"Huh? Yeah, your Third Eye. Second sight. Psychic sense. Geez, kid, you must have really scrambled your brains, I'm positive we went over this. Then again, I keep forgetting you humans have leaky memories."

"_Bob!"_ I said, frustrated. I had another of those weird feelings of déjà vu. I'd said that word before, in that exact way. A _lot._

"Right! Closing the Third Eye. Back to elementary school for you." The skull made a sound like it was clearing its throat. I wasn't sure how it managed that, given that it didn't _have_ a throat. "Clear your mind, grasshopper. Allow your thoughts to pass through you like air. Focus on letting them all go. Then… you know. Close it."

"Close… close it?" My head was throbbing again, and I was pretty sure it had more to do with the skull in my hand than it had to do with my _cracked Third Eye_, whatever that was.

"The extra sense you've got. You should be able to feel it kind of… right between your fleshy human eyes, maybe a little bit above them. Focus on shutting it again."

I tried to do as the skull said. I focused specifically on my breathing, letting go of the past and the future, living in the moment. I'd never been that big a fan of the spiritual, meditative aspects of Aikido, but that didn't mean I hadn't listened when my sensei went over them.

The images around me blurred and sped up. I let them — stopped paying attention to them. I focused inward, searching for the crack he'd mentioned, somewhere around my forehead.

It was there — the source of my headache. I felt it, now that I knew where to look for it. It was tingling, giving me a steady, low-key stream of overwhelming amounts of information. There was a soreness to it, as I tried to tug it closed. It resisted my efforts, and I winced.

"That is _so_ super weird," Bob said cheerfully. "But interesting! I've never seen something jam someone's Third Eye open like that before. Is it painful? Annoying? Is it driving you crazy? I bet you've got a headache, right?"

"I've definitely got a headache _now_," I muttered. I tried to refocus, to zone out Bob's constant chatter.

I tugged at my Third Eye more emphatically. Something snapped. A flash of sudden white-hot pain overwhelmed me.

I found myself sitting on my ass on the dusty floor of the attic, staring down the skull in my palms. The ghostly images were gone. My head still hurt a little bit… but the original source of the pain had finally vanished. My whole body relaxed, relieved, as though I'd pulled a giant splinter from my soul.

"Great!" Bob exclaimed. "So, uh. You gonna stop giving me the _third degree_ now?" If skulls could waggle their eyebrows, I was pretty sure Bob would have been doing it.

I blinked slowly. "Did you just pun at me?"

Bob cackled. "Yeah — yeah I did! I mean, it wasn't my best, but it was an okay warm-up, right?" The skull glowed a little harder. "No smile? Not even a little one? Okay, well, try this on for size." A pause. "What do you call a can opener that doesn't work? A _can't_ opener. Hiyo!"

An awkward silence fell in the attic.

Bob groaned. "What happened to you, kid? That was a _gem._ I'd normally have you rolling on the floor laughing by now." There was a real hint of disappointment in the skull's disembodied voice. For some reason, I felt guilty. I buried the feeling under two metric tons of confusion.

"So you knew me as a kid," I said. "And… my mom? But I don't remember you. And I'm pretty sure I'd remember a talking skull."

"Yeah," Bob said. "Geez, that seems like a pretty big thing to forget."

I frowned. "Well… I _kind_ of remember you. I think. You're definitely familiar, but I don't remember actually meeting you or talking to you."

"Ah," said Bob sagely. "Your episodic memory is missing."

I knitted my brow. "Is that another Third Eye kind of thing?" I asked.

"Nah, no. It's a medical term, actually. See, your brain stores memory in lots of different places. Like, you know how they say you never forget how to ride a bike? That's because riding a bike is stored in your procedural memory. So even if you don't remember the _day _you learned to ride a bike, you still remember _how_ to do it." Bob seemed to relish the explanation, like each word was a rare delicacy. "Your episodic memory would be the day you first rode a bike, what you ate for breakfast that day, the fact that you skinned your knee, and so on. Got it?"

I nodded, dazed. The explanation made me wonder — I tried thinking back to my childhood. Had I ever come up into the attic when I was young? Did I have any memory of it?

A blank spot.

There was a reason I'd never noticed it before. It was _subtle_. Even as I tried to focus in on the idea of what this attic might have looked like in my childhood, my brain did its best to sidetrack me seamlessly on to other related thoughts. It focused on the way the wallpaper used to look in the kitchen, the sound of my dad's car in the driveway, the smell of Chinese takeout food…

"This is nuts," I mumbled.

"You're telling me," Bob said. "Now I have to teach you everything all over again." He paused, then brightened. "Hey, wait! That means you don't remember any of the jokes I already told you! I get to tell 'em _all over again!"_

"Bob," I said. "Can we backtrack some, please? I'm kind of… missing memories, remember? Why don't we start with _what you are?"_

The little lights in Bob's eye sockets blinked. "Oh, yeah. Whew, remedial class. I'm a spirit of intellect. Phenomenal cosmic knowledge; itty-bitty living space." My lips twitched just a little. Bob caught it. "Aha! I _knew_ you still had a sense of humor hidden in there!"

I ignored him. "So, the skull is like your genie lamp? Do you grant wishes?"

Bob made a _psh_ sound. "I grant _knowledge_, kid! That's way more important than wishes. Think about it: we just figured out you're missing memories! Given time, we can probably figure out how to get 'em back. If I was a genie, you wouldn't even know you had memories you needed to wish for in the first place!"

I furrowed my brow, attempting to follow his logic. Eventually, I nodded. "Game theory," I said. "In a direct competition, the player with greater knowledge generally wins."

"Ooh, fancy!" Bob cooed. "Where'd you pick that one up?"

"Interrogation training," I said. "Real cerebral stuff. Not practical at _all_."

"Ah," Bob sighed. "My favorite sort of knowledge. I _love_ useless trivia. It's like junk food for the brain."

_That,_ I thought, _explains a lot._

"Okay," I said. "So you're a spirit of intellect. How did you end up with my mom?"

"Oh, that's simple. She—" Bob cut off abruptly. The twinkling in the skull's eye sockets flickered unsteadily.

"...Bob?" I asked carefully.

"...ooh. Uh. Can't go there, kid. Sorry." The skull sounded sheepish. "I've got, um. Limits. Stuff I'm not supposed to talk about."

I narrowed my eyes. "Who decided those limits?" I asked.

Bob remained silent. I figured that was his way of implying he wasn't allowed to say.

"...okay," I said again. I still felt like the world had gone mad, but at least I had a little bit more control over myself now that my Third Eye was closed. That was something. "I'm gonna need to have a _long_ sit-down with you sometime really soon. But it's been kind of a crazy few days, and first I think I need to figure out what's going on _now_. Can you help me out with that, Bob?"

"_Can_ I?" Bob scoffed. "Of course I can. And I totally will! On just a few conditions."

I raised my eyebrows. "Fair enough. What are they?"

"One: you have _got_ to put me somewhere other than that trunk. It wasn't such a bad place when I was getting pulled out every other day, but I am _dead_ sick of it now." He paused, and it took me a second to realize that he'd made another intentional pun.

"...dead sick," I said. "I got it. You're a skull."

"I _live_ in a skull," Bob grumbled. "Which brings me to condition two: you have _got_ to stop being so serious. It's a bummer, kid. You're the toughest room I've had since _mmph._" The spirit choked on whatever he'd been about to say, and I assumed it was something else he wasn't supposed to talk about.

I sighed. "I can't promise that one. My job isn't exactly happy-go-lucky. But I'll try to work on it."

Bob let out a kind of sputtering sigh. A tiny puff of air whiffed out from between the skull's jaws. "All right, I guess that's as good as I can ask for. Anyway — grab the bracelet, shut the trunk, and let's go sight-seeing in the living room, huh?"

I followed instructions, settling into a general sense of credulity. For just a little bit, I was too tired to wonder whether I was going crazy or not.

I needed to consult a skull about a murder case.

0-0-0-0

Bob let out a low whistle.

I tried not to think too hard about how he'd managed it, without lips.

"You want the good news or the bad news first?" he asked.

I'd spent the last thirty minutes or so giving him the detective's cliff's notes on everything from the last few days. It would have taken _less_ time, but Bob was endlessly excitable, and he kept trying to interrupt before I was done, sidetracking the conversation into things like Japanese cultural associations between blood types and personalities and popular radio shows from the 1930s.

"I feel like I just said that to someone earlier today," I muttered. "Okay, bad news first. May as well get it over with."

"All right. You're definitely dealing with a practitioner. That's a mortal who uses magic. This guy's got a _lot_ of breadth and power, too — he might even be a full wizard. Between the heart exploding stuff, the shadow sending, and the Three-Eye, if you want to assume that's his direct doing… he's definitely got his hands on some nasty knowledge. That's all Thaumaturgy: your complex, slow and steady magic."

Magic. Great. Somehow I'd figured we were headed here. And why not, right? Second sight, living shadows, talking skulls. If someone didn't bring up the word 'magic,' it would have been even _more_ shocking.

"How the hell do I fight that?" I asked. "He can do all this stuff from a distance. I haven't even seen him in person yet."

"Oh, well. He can do it from a distance, but he can't do it with _nothing,_" Bob said. "Thaumaturgy is about forming connections. If you want to affect someone with it, you need a piece of them. Fresh blood is best, but any part of the body will do it. Sometimes, you can use a possession with a strong emotional or spiritual attachment, but that's way more dicey."

I considered that. "So he's having trouble getting his hands on a piece of Marcone," I said. "If he wants to get at him, he's going to have to start taking risks to try and get his blood or something."

"Bingo," Bob said, enthused. "But I haven't even gotten to the good news yet!"

I blinked. "I thought that _was_ the good news. All right — go for it."

"The good news is, he's a hack!" Bob chortled. "You can tell from his choices. Hearts exploding? I mean, sure, it takes a lot of power to pull that off, but it's way inefficient! Any actually well-trained wizard would know that you go for the path of least resistance. If I had mortal magic and I was trying to kill someone, I'd go for the brain. A million little delicate electrical signals there, and all it takes is one screw-up to cause permanent damage. No kinetic energy, just _zap—!"_

"—_Bob._" I'd already said that word an awful lot the last half-hour. "So, to sum up. You're saying he's untrained."

"Not just untrained," Bob said. "Probably plain old stupid, too. I mean, he's broken at least one Law of Magic already in a really flashy, public way. I'd be shocked if the White Council hasn't sent a Warden after him by now."

I rubbed at my forehead. Bob was a fantastic ally, and a really great eleventh-hour find. But sometimes he felt a little _too _helpful, spewing all these terms I didn't understand in the least. "Law of Magic," I said, tasting the capital letters on my tongue. "White Council. Warden."

"Seven Laws of Magic," Bob told me. "The most obvious one being _don't kill with magic._ The White Council is kind of like a worldwide wizard's union, except with way less democracy and way more chopping people's heads off. The Wardens are the ones who do the head-chopping — mainly when someone violates a Law of Magic."

I reached up to rub at my neck uncomfortably. "These guys have existed my whole life?" I asked. "How come I've never heard of them?"

Bob made a frustrated noise. "You _have_ heard of them," he said. "I told you about them when you were six years old. You went and forgot."

"I didn't mean that," I said. "I meant… if they're chopping people's heads off, wouldn't someone notice?"

"Oh, psh," Bob said. "You're a homicide detective! Can't you think of a few creative ways to get rid of a body? These guys are fully-fledged combat wizards, too. That adds a few options to the old toolbox."

I quieted at that. There's a whole lot of people who go missing and are never really found. Was it really so weird to think that just a handful of them had fallen afoul of this White Council?

"Right? Yeah, I thought so. Point being, some Warden's eventually going to key in on this guy, if they haven't already. Then it's silver swords and _snicker-snack._"

I frowned. "I hate to admit it, but maybe that's the angle I should be pursuing, then. I'm an amateur at this magical sleuthing stuff. If there's a proper magical police force — as, uh, _medieval_ as they might be — shouldn't I ping them and let them know they've got a problem in the area?"

Bob sucked in some air between the teeth of the skull. "Ehhhh, I don't know, kid. The best way to get in contact with the White Council would be to go to Edinburgh. Second-best would be to figure out who the closest Warden is, but they might be a few cities over. That'd be an investigation all its own. You got time for that?"

I was silent for a moment. We both knew I didn't have time for that.

"Anyway, uh. I don't think you want to have a run-in with a Warden. They don't like mortals knowing about them. And I figure by your reactions so far, you never did manifest any magic." Bob sighed. "Man. I spent so much work helping teach you, too. How'd your mom deal with you taking after dear old dad instead of her?"

I pressed my lips together. "Mom disappeared," I said. "Dad died."

I had the impression of the skull's eye-lights slowly blinking. "...woah," said Bob. "Major bummer."

"That's one way to put it," I said.

"I've never been so glad I don't have mushy human emotions," Bob said. "I figure I'd be pretty upset, otherwise." There was an odd pitch to his disembodied voice as he said it. I frowned.

"You don't get upset?" I asked.

"Nah. Spirit of intellect. Pure rationality, all that jazz. No room for emotion." Bob's voice was uncertain, though, and I thought I detected a hint of unsteadiness in it.

"...but you can tell jokes," I said slowly. "And you know what a bummer is."

"Intellectually," Bob said in a small voice.

_Huh,_ I thought. The skull was in denial. _That is so a problem for a later date,_ I told myself.

"Hey Bob," I said. "If I'm not a… wizard." I winced on the word, though I suspected it was the appropriate technical term. "If I'm not one of those. How come my Third Eye got opened? Does that happen to normal people?"

"Nope!" Bob said brightly. He seemed relieved at the change of subject. "Should be totally impossible, actually. I'm really curious how you managed it."

I chewed on that implication. "I took a drug," I said. "I mean. Not on purpose. But it still got into my system, so I guess it counts." I frowned. "But that was the first time. It's been months since then. I've been feeling mostly better. Then it happened again last night, out of the blue. I got… I guess… hypnotized. By this woman." I cringed. "Maybe she was a vampire." I really didn't like _that_ word, either.

"Oh. Huh." Bob thought on this. "Well, your Third Eye looked kind of damaged to me when you had it open. If this drug cranked it open unnaturally, it'd make sense if that left some problems behind. Not sure how you got it closed again in the first place, but it's probably prone to popping open again whenever you're under extra psychic pressure."

If skulls could squint, this one did. "That's kind of dangerous, kid. You better be careful. Once you See something with the Sight, you're stuck with it forever. If your Sight pops open around the wrong thing, you could go permanently cuckoo."

"I'm not sure how to be careful about something I can't control," I said.

"Uh… as your professional air elemental, my advice would be to stop investigating the warlock," Bob said.

"Noted," I muttered. "Discarded. Assume I can't _not_ investigate. Got any other advice for me?"

Bob considered. "...don't look anything in the eyes," he said. "And don't take any more drugs."

I checked the clock. Five-thirty. Damn it. I could have spent all night asking questions, but I didn't have that long. I needed to get to my meeting with Marcone.

"Thanks Bob," I said. "You're a lifesaver."

I picked back up the skull — gently, this time — and placed him on the mantle over the fireplace. He would have looked pretty classy there, if it weren't for the lace doily underneath him.

"No problem, kid. Though… you mind doing me a solid?" Bob's eye-lights flickered worriedly. "Just don't let it get around you found me. There's some folks out there that can really hold a hundred-year grudge, if you know what I mean."

I nodded. "Lips sealed. I owe you that much."

A tiny sigh of relief whiffed through the skull's teeth. "Great. Uh." He paused. "Good luck, kid."

I grabbed my coat. "I don't do luck," I said. "I do stubborn. Like a, uh. Dog with a bone?"

Bob chuckled. "Aww. Okay, that was a cute try," he said. "I'll take it. _Bone_ voyage!"

What the hell. It'd been a hard few days. I let myself laugh.


	10. Chapter 10

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Ten_

I called both Carmichael and the Lieutenant on the way to the Varsity, keeping them apprised of my movements. It was good partner etiquette with Carmichael, but there was more to it than that — I needed to keep this meeting open and aboveboard, so no one could accuse me of secretly cozying up to the crime boss. It would be terribly ironic, after all, if I put so much effort into staying out of Marcone's pocket, only to have the Lieutenant cut me from the force over accusations I'd been passing him information.

I walked into the Varsity at six in the evening, on the dot. I didn't want to give Marcone the satisfaction of thinking I'd gone out of my way to be early.

The club catered mostly to the college-age crowd. It was far from packed at six in the evening, but it still had a modest throng of young adults, all talking in the sort of casual slang that made me feel old. A few jocks gave a whistle as I passed, but I was too weirded out to be offended. I was twice-married, twice-divorced, and not quite old enough to be their mother. I pulled off my coat to reveal the badge at my belt, and the whistling died abruptly, confirming my suspicion that at least one of them was too young to be there legally.

Marcone was sitting in a large, circular booth near the back of the bar, along with a handful of his little minions. He didn't look up as I approached, though he must have known I was there, based on the uneasy silence that followed the movement of that badge through the bar.

"Mister Hendricks," he said to his red-haired bodyguard, as I came within speaking distance. "Could you please do the honors?"

Hendricks rose from his seat. I spread my arms expectantly, with a roll of my eyes. The large man patted me down, searching for wires. I had my phone taken from me once again. I'd slipped on my mother's silver bracelet out of plain old superstition, though I knew it was useless and run-down by now. Hendricks gave it the fish-eye, but passed it over. He paused at my gun, frowning deeply, but I gave him a warning look. "I'm not gonna shoot your boss in public," I said. "The gun stays."

Hendricks glanced back toward Marcone, who waved a hand in confirmation.

I slid into the booth, just as Marcone jerked his chin at his goons, dismissing them from our presence. The three of them moved off in different directions, Hendricks included, to form a discouraging perimeter around our discussion.

Marcone opened his mouth to offer some sort of pleasantry, but I cut him off. "You started a gang war," I said.

The mob boss frowned. "You're such a sparkling conversationalist, Detective," he said sardonically. "I can't see how it is you've garnered such a difficult reputation."

"Your opinion of my conversational skills means the world to me," I drawled. I was about to barge right to the point, but my eyes fell to a strange object that had been set at the center of the table. It was a withered black scorpion, a little smaller than the size of my palm.

Marcone raised an eyebrow at me. "A warning, I presume," he said. "I found it in an envelope on the office desk, addressed to me by name."

"And it's not in the dumpster by now?" I asked.

"I thought I would let you have a look at it first," he said.

"How generous," I muttered. I took the opportunity to skim my eyes over it, though, since it was there. It certainly looked threatening enough, in a general sense, but I wasn't aware of any relevant connotations. Normally, I might have tried to take it with me to check it for fingerprints, but Bob's discussion of Thaumaturgy and long-distance links made me wary of that.

"You didn't touch it, did you?" I asked.

Marcone frowned. "You must have a dim view of my intelligence to ask that," he said. "No. I touched neither the envelope nor its contents."

I focused my eyes on his face. "You think it's magic?" I asked.

That got a fleeting reaction of surprise. Marcone tried to cover it with a neutral expression, but we both knew I'd already caught it.

"...perhaps," he said. "It seems most prudent to assume as much."

I considered him carefully. It occurred to me that I had more cards in this conversation than I'd had in the last one. Marcone hadn't just been offering me knowledge of Tommy Tomm and his movements — what he'd _really_ been offering me was knowledge of the supernatural.

As I ran into more and more instances of frightening, inexplicable things, I was supposed to realize just how in over my head I was, and come running to him for help. That, I thought, was why he'd really sent me to the Velvet Room. I was supposed to have a run-in with Bianca. I was supposed to have a come-to-god moment, to be confronted by something I couldn't handle on my own.

But now, I suspected, I had more knowledge at my disposal than Marcone had at his, in the form of one overly-chatty, pun-prone air elemental. The balance between us had shifted abruptly, whether he knew it or not. I just needed to decide how best to use that to my advantage.

_Huh,_ I thought. _Game theory._ Maybe it wasn't quite as useless as I'd once thought.

"I gather you've reconsidered my offer, Detective," Marcone said.

"You gathered wrong," I said. "I'm here to ask you to do the right thing, and help me clean up your mess before someone else gets hurt."

Cold anger flickered behind Marcone's eyes, but he controlled himself. "I gave you a very specific proposition, Detective," he said. "If you've come here to waste my time, you will find me far less accommodating than I have been so far."

I wanted to look him in the eyes — to let him know I wasn't intimidated in the least. But Bob's advice came back to me, and I forced myself to stare at his chin instead, just in case. "You don't own me," I said. "And you will never own me. I know you're used to forcing people to kiss your ring, but you're going to have to get that through your head. I think you're the worst scum on this earth, Marcone — but you're still _Chicago_ scum, and that means I'm obliged to make sure you don't end up with your heart outside your chest. Now if you've got something that might lead me to the wizard that's got it in for you, I personally think it's in your best interests to spill."

The word _wizard_ put him off-balance again. I knew what he was thinking. Had I been playing dumb this whole time? Did I know more than he did? It probably wouldn't occur to him that I'd managed to get an infodump off a magical talking head in the space of only a few hours. That was just the kind of bizarre circumstance even the smartest man couldn't account for.

"And how is it you've concluded there's a wizard after me?" Marcone asked. He was going to do the reasonable thing now, and search out the limits of my knowledge. He needed to decide what value I held to him now.

"That's not how this works," I said. "I'm the cop. You're the guy who wants to keep his heart beating. Tell me where to look, and I'll make sure this guy ends up behind bars, before he gets what he needs to take you out. That's only a matter of time, by the way. You might be professionally paranoid, but even you can't account for every hangnail and every strand of hair."

Okay, I gave him that one for free. I was telling the truth when I said I considered it my responsibility to keep him alive.

Marcone's face was pale with anger now. He might have been a man of great control, but he was also genuinely frightened, and he clearly didn't like having the tables turned on him one bit. Powerful men do stupid things when they feel like they're in a corner. "You are in the process of doing something you will deeply regret," he told me in a low, strained tone.

"Wouldn't be new for me," I said. "Ask me about my ex-husbands." I raised my eyebrows at him. "I came here to offer you help that you clearly need. You don't strike me as the sort of guy to throw that away on account of your pride. I guess I'm ready to be proven wrong, though."

I watched the battle play out in his face. Marcone hadn't gotten where he was by being stupid. His underlings were far enough away that none of them could hear us. If he knuckled under and gave me what I wanted, he'd be one step closer to ridding himself of a dangerous rival, and no one would be the wiser.

But he would know that I'd outplayed him. And I would know it, too.

"...if you're so well-informed," Marcone said. "Then why put your people in danger instead of mine?"

"Because it's our job and not yours," I said. "Because anything you do will be you protecting your own ass first and foremost, instead of protecting everyone else." I lowered my voice. "Because we both know what happens to innocent people who walk into your line of fire."

Marcone's jaw twitched. A bright, angry fire flashed behind his green eyes. His knuckles clenched white on the table. I realized too late that I had hit a sore spot.

That was bad. I thought I'd just been restating well-known facts. I'd been aiming to make my position known — not to piss him off.

"I think we've exhausted the possibilities of this conversation—" he started.

I jumped back from the table with a high-pitched shriek.

Okay. Look.

I can deal with dead bodies. I can deal with mobsters. I can even deal with shadow men and talking skulls.

But we've all got something that bypasses our rational reactions and shoots straight for our lizard brain. Something with way too many chitinous legs had just skittered across my hand, and god damnit, I _cannot_ deal with that.

Hendricks had his gun out. I belatedly realized he had trained it on _me._

But Marcone had risen from the booth quickly. His eyes swept the table, searching for something.

I am not proud to say, I let out a little moan. "Oh god," I said. "Where the fuck did it go?"

"It's disappeared," Marcone snapped. He raised his voice. "Clear the establishment, Mister Hendricks."

There was something weirdly satisfying about watching students scramble out of the way of that tall, brick house of a man. I've had to corral young adults before, and believe me, it doesn't work half so well when you're five foot nothing with a cute little button nose. Where Hendricks went, though, people just bolted for the door with an exceedingly polite _yessir._

Something much larger than my palm skittered toward Marcone's feet, its little legs scrabbling across the floor with a sound straight out of my worst nightmares.

Pure, terrified instinct flooded my body. I gave the thing a solid kick to the middle. It flew a few feet back, twisting in the air and skidding across the floor. The little dessicated scorpion had turned into a horrifying brown menace the size of a small dog. Its stinging tail was longer than the rest of its body combined, and dripping with venom. I didn't want to think what a sting from that thing would do to me.

The unnatural scorpion was already darting away behind one of the tables, dislodging chairs as it went. A girl screamed as she saw it, and I felt a momentary sense of solidarity with her. The few lingering college kids hustled for the door more quickly, though Hendricks had to haul away one of the jocks I'd seen on my way in — the moron had paused to crane his head, trying to get a better look from the doorway.

Marcone pulled a gun. I didn't bother asking if he had a permit for it. He aimed carefully, tracking the thing's movements, waiting for it to come out into the open again. One of the goons who'd been sitting at the table before had straight-up disappeared, I noted. That wasn't going to be a good look for him later. The other one fanned out to cover other angles, and I abruptly remembered how little I appreciate the brute force approach.

"Head for the back door," I told Marcone. "It's after you. No need to make its job any easier."

Marcone narrowed his eyes. "I don't run," he said shortly.

God. _Men._

"There's way more open space outside," I gritted out. "It'll be easier to kill if you lure it out there where we can shoot it."

Marcone didn't respond — but he slowly began to back himself up past the booth. I stepped out in front of him, keenly aware that I'd intentionally turned my back on a pissed-off mobster with a gun.

I pulled my own firearm and slid off the safety, with a careful side-eye toward Hendricks. The last thing I needed was one of Marcone's goons getting the wrong idea and thinking I was part of the ambush on their boss. Hendricks met my eyes and nodded incrementally.

The scorpion exploded out from cover with unnatural speed. I raised my gun and squeezed the trigger, even as my senses belatedly informed me it had grown again — its three sets of awful, beady eyes were level with my chest now, and the stinger on the end of the tail that swung down toward me was now the size of a rapier.

I abandoned firing and threw myself backward as quickly as I could. The stinger grazed past my shoulder, instead of slamming into it — the venom burned like a bitch, but adrenaline kept it from slowing me down for the moment. Unfortunately, the scorpion was _much_ quicker than I was. It lunged forward again like a rubber band, and I knew it had me.

A table slammed into it from behind, with a slight crunch of chitin. I blinked.

Hendricks followed up his bizarre assault with a heavy chair, slamming it down on one of the thing's many leg joints. As I scrambled backward, I wondered briefly why he hadn't just shot it — but the answer came to me quickly. _I'm in the line of fire. Chair's safer. _Someone hauled me up by the arm, dragging me back, and I hissed in pain. Marcone had me in hand, and he'd started dragging me back toward the door with him. The other goon took a potshot at the scorpion, and Hendricks had to dance back quickly to get out of the way.

Some of the bullets _had_ sunk in. I saw a coppery blood oozing from the thing where one of my shots had caught it in the side. I was woefully lacking in knowledge of scorpion physiology, so I had no idea whether shooting center mass would hit anything important. Given the way this thing was growing, I feared we had a short timeframe in which to kill it before it became too much for our firepower.

The scorpion shook off its momentary confusion, and I saw it sweep around to look directly at me. I realized I was currently in the grip of its primary target. _Shit._

Marcone squeezed off a gunshot past my shoulder. His bullet hit the thing in the head, just barely missing an eye. The two of us backed into the wall near the back door, and I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye.

I tried to pull free from Marcone's grip, but he held on out of pure instinct. "Let me go," I snarled. I jammed my elbow into his ribs — hard enough to shock him, but not hard enough to wind him. As he released me, I lunged for the fire extinguisher next to us, hauling it off the wall and hoping to god that the mobster still bothered keeping his buildings up to code.

As the scorpion charged toward Marcone, I let loose with the extinguisher. It kicked against my shoulder, sending jolts of pain through my body, but I somehow managed to hold onto it as it spewed frigid carbon dioxide at the creature.

The scorpion staggered back, shuddering. Hendricks and the other goon took advantage of the window of opportunity to pump more bullets into it from a safer angle, though some of the shots seemed more blind than others due to the cloud from the extinguisher. I kept the cold going; I was satisfied to hear the agonized clitter-clack of the scorpion's legs against the floor.

More shots rang out. The venom in my shoulder burned and burned. The extinguisher slid from my hands in spite of my best efforts, clattering awkwardly to the ground — but the damage was done. The scorpion shuddered once more… then curled itself into a tortured-looking position, much more reminiscent of the mummified thing it had previously been.

Then, it collapsed into formless, colorless goop.

I stared blankly for a second, my shoulder still burning. Black had started seeping into my vision from the corners. I knew that was a bad sign, but I just couldn't bring myself to pay attention to it.

"...anyone else feel like we just walked into a horror movie?" I mumbled. I paused. "Shit. Am I the blond chick at the beginning or the cop at the end?"

Sirens rang outside — at least one ambulance and two cops cars, if my ears were working right.

I had just enough time before I blacked out to look on the bright side — at least while I was unconscious, I wouldn't have to be the one to explain what the hell had just happened.


	11. Chapter 11

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Eleven_

The kind of nightmares you get while you're dying of scorpion venom are something else, let me tell you.

The human voices around me blurred into a low, uncomfortable drone. My brain, high as a kite and firing on all the wrong cylinders, suggested to me that I was covered in stinging wasps. Some of them burrowed beneath my skin, crawling through my veins. One of them dug into my forehead, and a single very clear thought tore through me:

_Don't take any more drugs,_ Bob had said.

Drugs and venom share a lot of stuff in common. As they say, the dosage makes the poison.

Dark clouds leaned on the sky, heavy with power just on the edge of spilling over. I caught a glimpse of Marcone, standing off to one side, slowly soaking in the rain — I wasn't sure whether he was physically there or whether he was just another of those strange ghosts from the past, but looking at him made me keenly, uncomfortably aware of his humanity. I know killers like him are human at heart — it's what drives me to distraction and depression. Having it shoved in my face hurt in a way I found it hard to articulate. _You chose to be like this,_ I tried to tell him. _You could be different, but you chose this, and you keep choosing it._

A woman with bloodstained hands pulled an oxygen mask over my face. A man with a hole punched through his heart calmly murmured to someone nearby. The shadows leaned in upon me, coalescing into a tall figure.

"_Someone dies tonight after all, Detective,"_ the shadow man said. _"You should have stayed out of it."_

I screamed and tried to lash out at him. Someone held me down. I saw the crimson bonds at my wrists, tightening slowly. I tried to tear at them with my fingernails again, but I was still pinned, unable to move my arms.

I stared at the red knots instead, willing them to uncurl.

The first tiny strands of rope began to fray.

0-0-0-0

I woke up to the distant sound of polka.

Given that I've come to associate polka with the morgue, this did not help my level of panic. I tried to bolt upright, but my muscles weren't working quite right — instead, I half-thrashed, half-rolled to one side, trapped within a thin hospital blanket. A stint in my arm tugged painfully, and I bit off a harsh swear word.

The hospital was choked with awful echoes. Someone else — many someones — had laid where I was, scared and uncertain. The walls had absorbed their whimpers, their prayers, their weariness, their desperation.

"Karrin?" Quick footsteps. The polka drew near, soft and tinny. It was playing on a pair of headphones, dangling around the neck of the man that now leaned over me, concern evident on his face.

Waldo Butters was a welcome sight — or maybe he was a welcome Sight, now that I think about it. My cracked Third Eye saw him nearly as he was. That funny shock of black hair and that familiar set of blue scrubs were a soothing island of normality among the strangeness. The more I looked at him, though, the more I saw hints of things leaking out from beneath the surface, like little motes of light. Waldo had a weird kind of inner strength to him, but I knew it mostly came out on behalf of other people instead of for his own sake. There was a music threaded through his soul, a determined smile and a kind of "oh well" shrug in the face of death that didn't quite eradicate the fear behind it.

I realized I was staring, but I couldn't bring myself to look away. It was the most comforting thing I'd seen in ages.

Waldo grabbed me carefully underneath the arm, helping me back into a seated position. He checked my stint with a frown. "I don't think you busted anything," he mumbled. He looked back up at me, blinking behind his glasses. "How are you feeling?"

I closed my eyes, but the physical action didn't help my Third Eye. Waldo's image remained imprinted on my eyelids, clear as day. "Out of it," I mumbled. It took most of my willpower to get the words out. "Just… give me a second."

I steadied my breathing, as I'd done before. I numbed my mind, trying to let the images wash over me without taking possession of them. But Waldo's calm, kind, patient image was the most stubborn of the lot. It was so hard not to want to cling to it. After all the horrible things I'd seen, it was the vision of a halfway-decent human being that gave me the most pause. Part of me didn't _want_ to shut away that Sight, to go back to thinking about dead bodies and people who'd cut away their empathy on purpose, as though it was an unnecessary limb.

Waldo waited. And waited. I gritted my teeth. I slowly, _reluctantly_ searched for the point in my forehead that had come loose again, dragging it painfully closed. There were tears in my eyes when I opened them, but I had a hundred excuses easy to hand if I really needed them.

I didn't need them. Waldo had pulled off his glasses. He was openly wiping at his own eyes, with obvious relief. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I'm not used to… there's a reason I don't come upstairs very often."

The smile I gave him felt weirdly soft and fuzzy. I couldn't help it. I knew that glimpse of his soul would flood back to mind now every time I looked at him.

"Living people freak you out?" I joked.

To my surprise, Waldo nodded. "I mean… not in general. But in a medical sense. A body is an empty shell. I don't have to worry about hurting it. But there's something, um. Fragile. About living people."

I considered that for a second. "Yeah," I said. "I get it." I frowned. "What are you doing here?"

Waldo gave me a surprised look. "You're at my hospital," he said. "I work right downstairs. Someone told me you'd come in."

Quiet, scratchy polka music filled the silence between us. Waldo didn't seem to realize he'd left his headphones playing.

"...was it bad?" I asked.

Waldo hesitated. He nodded slowly, though. "Your chart says scorpion venom. It's a neurotoxin. A little sting isn't so bad normally, unless you're already part of a compromised group… but you had a lot in you. It's lucky the hospital even had enough antivenom on hand."

I frowned. My stomach was queasy. My body still felt shaky. My fingers spasmed every once in a while. I knew I wasn't up to standing on my own, much as I wanted to do it.

The memory of the hospital walls' whispers trickled back to me, as clear as day. I swallowed and leaned back into my pillow. I suddenly wanted out of there very badly. Hell, I wanted out of my own head. I couldn't accomplish the latter, but if I was persuasive, maybe I could get a discharge.

"You think I'm good to go home?" I asked.

Waldo frowned. "I'm pretty sure they'll want you to stick around a little longer, just to be sure…" My expression must have been just this side of devastated, because he winced. "…but you're technically past any chance of anaphylaxis from the antivenom. If you swear to get some bed rest, your doctor might cave."

Bed rest. Home. There was a reason those words inspired a knee-jerk defiance in me. I groaned. "God, the case. How long have I been out?"

"Almost a full day," Waldo said. He fixed on me the sternest gaze I'd ever seen cross his face. "There's no way you're going back on the job like this, Karrin," he said. "You're lucky to be alive. The others can handle your cases for a while. That's why you've got a team."

"Shit," I muttered. "Ron really is primary now, isn't he?" I searched around for my phone, and spotted it on a chair next to the bed, nestled on top of what was left of my clothes. Paramedics are hell on clothing — I didn't even see my shirt on the pile, though they'd been kind enough to leave my blood-stained bra. My mother's bracelet glinted there too, though I didn't see my gun or badge. To be fair, they weren't the sort of things you left laying around in a hospital room. I'd probably have to ask to get them back.

My brain sputtered and tried to start up again. Hendricks had my phone, last I'd checked. That meant he'd somehow gone to the trouble of returning it. Smart man — I wouldn't want to be a criminal caught with an injured cop's phone either. He'd probably also been the one to suggest they treat me for scorpion venom. "Can you pass me my phone?" I asked Waldo.

He eyed me suspiciously, but in the end he politely complied. The screen was flickering weirdly, and I wondered if it had gotten caught in the rain. I had to press a few of the buttons more than once, but I eventually managed to call out to Carmichael.

The line hissed and spat, but I heard his voice as he picked up.

"_Murph?"_ Carmichael's voice was exhausted, but there was a hint of relief to it too. _"You alive over there?"_

"Yeah," I sighed. "Shit. Sorry to leave you in charge like that."

"_I'll put it on your tab,"_ he said. _"You mind me asking what the hell happened? All I hear is Marcone's bar is trashed and you're in the hospital pumped full of poison or something."_

"Someone tried to kill Marcone," I said flatly. "I stepped in the way."

Waldo blinked at me. Belatedly, he seemed to realize he was eavesdropping. He pushed to his feet and stepped back toward the door. _I'll be outside,_ he mouthed, and I nodded.

"_That tracks. We know he was there, but we haven't been able to find him. Guess he's gone to ground so no one takes a second shot. I kind of wish you'd just let Marcone kick it, Murph. Lieutenant says you're on medical leave till the doctors clear you for duty again. We've been passing around your caseload, and it's enough to make a man cry."_

I bit down on my lip, frustrated. Walker must have been in a _great_ mood. Between the medical leave and the weapon discharge, there was no way I was cutting through the bureaucracy and unbenching myself in a hurry.

But there was the problem. Carmichael, resident S.I. skeptic, was possibly the worst person to deal with this case. If I tried to tell him everything I'd learned about wizards and spells, he'd probably send me to a shrink.

_Why not show him Bob? _The thought plunked into my brain. Sure, Bob hadn't wanted his existence to get around, but maybe I could convince the spirit to let Carmichael in on the secret, if I asked really nicely and made a bad joke.

"About the case—" I started.

"_Don't start that shit,"_ Carmichael told me. _"I've got it handled, Murph. I don't want to hear another word on it."_

I gritted my teeth. "Ron, there's things you don't know—"

"_That's a word, Murph. Night."_

The line went dead.

I tried calling a few more times. Carmichael didn't pick up.

A few minutes later, Waldo checked inside. I waved him in morosely.

"Hey," he said. "Good news. I know your doctor. He said he's willing to do a quick checkup and let you go, if I promise to keep an eye on you for the night."

I raised an eyebrow. "You've got work, Waldo," I challenged him.

"I've got personal days," he replied. "And you're a friend." Waldo paused. "If you _want_ to stay in the hospital, on the other hand—"

I shuddered. "You've got a deal. Get me the hell out of here."

0-0-0-0

Discharge still took a lot longer than I wanted, between getting my final check-up, signing my paperwork, and tracking down my last possessions, but I was glad to be free of the hospital. I gave Waldo directions back to my place, with an exceptionally weird feeling, and he drove us back.

I spent that time trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do about this case.

There was still a quiet gang war raging out there, and a psychopathic wizard with the ability to make hearts explode and scorpions grow. The department's resident skeptic currently had my case, and he'd made it super-clear he had no intention of sitting down long enough for me to explain the crazy stuff to him. Meanwhile, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before someone else died, if it hadn't happened already.

Marcone, I knew, would eagerly accept any scraps of information I gave him, no matter how nuts I sounded. But I'd meant what I said to him, no matter how much it pissed him off. A few years back, Marcone had gotten involved in a firefight that claimed the life of a little girl in passing. He'd gotten away from it without ever going to court, but given how deformed the bullet was, there was no way to tell whose gun it had come from. It might even have come directly from _Marcone's_ gun.

_Careless_ was the word I'd use for him. Not because he was stupid, but because he literally just didn't _care_.

I frowned. If that was the case, then _why_ had Marcone doubled back for me before?

Maybe, I thought, he just didn't want the hassle of a dead cop on his doorstep.

The idea didn't fit right. I didn't like that. The truth, I admitted to myself, was probably some kind of messy in-between. Human beings like to think that we're logical, consistent creatures… but a lot of the time, we're a weird assortment of conflicting choices, all rationalized and made to fit together after-the-fact. It was possible Marcone had just reacted instinctively under pressure, pulling a momentary ally out of the line of fire.

Either way, no matter the reason, I had to admit that he'd risked his life to do something decent. That didn't negate all his other crimes — the fact that he ran an entire _empire_ of misery — and it didn't make him a good person as a whole… but ignoring it didn't serve any good purpose either. It was just a way to make things feel neater than they really were.

Anyway, whatever I'd led the mobster to believe, I'd already given him the most important information I'd managed to dig up so far. I had the means — the murder weapon, a kind of magic known as Thaumaturgy. Everyone involved knew the motive now — the gang war — Carmichael included. What I decided to do from here would depend on the best way to find that last piece: opportunity.

I needed to get my legs to stop shaking, get my head on straight, and figure out my next move.

Waldo pulled up in front of the house, and got out to help me from the passenger's seat. Any illusion of competency or control I'd had up until that moment evaporated abruptly as I staggered my way up the sidewalk, leaning heavily on his shoulder. The short walk felt agonizingly long. I took my keychain from him, searching out the right one with fingers that shook uncontrollably.

By the time Waldo helped me collapse onto my couch, I knew I wasn't going anywhere that night.

The medical examiner straightened, readjusting his glasses. I'd expected him to be a little more winded, but I'd somehow forgotten he spent at least part of his day cracking open rib cages. "I'll go grab the rest of your stuff," he told me. "Just take a breather."

He headed back out the door, and I took a deep breath, leaning into the couch arm.

"_Psst!_" I blinked, and jerked my head up. Dim little golden lights flickered in the eye sockets of the skull on the fireplace mantle. "Kid," Bob said. "Who's the nerd?"

"Friend from work," I said. "He's nice."

Bob scoffed. "That's not a cop," he said. "Not unless the police have _really_ lowered their standards since your dad's time."

"You're right," I said. "He's a nerd. He's a medical examiner. _And_ he's nice. So don't be a jerk."

The two golden fireflies in the skull's sockets winked out abruptly as Waldo headed back inside, carrying my personal effects. He paused as he came in sight of the mantle. "Hey," he said. "How old is that skull?"

I blinked. "Uh… don't know, honestly. It belonged to my mom."

Waldo set down the stuff in his arms, then reached out to take Bob's skull delicately in his hands. There was a fascinated concentration on his face as he turned it over, peering at it through his glasses. "This doesn't look chemically bleached," he mused. "I wonder if it was actually sun-bleached? These carvings on top look kind of like chemistry symbols…"

I snorted. "You know, most people would get a little creeped out, walking into my living room and finding a human skull."

"Are you kidding?" Waldo said. "It's a mystery — that's even better!" He narrowed his eyes at Bob. "This looks like a male adult. I want to say it's a pretty old find, given the wear and tear, but that's probably just the romantic in me. I don't guess you ever got it carbon dated."

I gave him a bemused look. "I literally found it in the attic today. Uh… yesterday, I guess."

That was probably the wrong thing to say. I watched the words pique Waldo's interest. "If you didn't mind letting me borrow it for a bit…" he began.

I shook my head quickly. "I, uh. Not high on my to-do list, Waldo. Sorry." It was a lame comeback, but I needed _some_ excuse not to hand over the skull. Waldo looked immediately embarrassed though, and I felt a little spike of guilt.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. Obviously." He cleared his throat, and set the skull back down on the doily. "Are you still nauseous, or do you want to try getting some food down?"

I frowned. "I'm still not feeling so hot, but I figure I better try anyway. I think there's some oatmeal in the pantry."

I tried to push to my feet, but Waldo waved me off. "I'll go find it," he assured me. "That's what I'm here for."

I waited on the couch as he disappeared into the kitchen. That weird feeling hit me again. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had anyone over to the house, even as a friend. I sure as hell couldn't remember the last time someone had gone out of their way to take care of me without being paid to do it. _Grandma Murphy,_ I thought dimly. _The day I came home from Academy with the flu._

"You gonna let everyone who comes in here manhandle me like that?" Bob demanded from the mantle.

I gave him a warning look. "Bob," I said. "If you want to keep yourself a secret, you're gonna have to practice being _quiet_."

Bob's teeth clacked together reluctantly. Quiet, I had figured out, was not his speciality. I didn't entirely blame him — he'd been stuffed in a trunk in the attic for years. It didn't seem to have affected him quite as badly as it would have done with a human being, given that he wasn't stark raving mad, but I couldn't imagine it had done _nothing._

Waldo returned with a bowl of hot oatmeal. I normally found oatmeal depressing — probably the reason it had lasted so long in my pantry — but I ate it down with unusual gusto. My stomach didn't immediately threaten to toss it up, which I considered to be a good sign.

He helped me to bed — another bit of embarrassment all its own — but I managed to convince him to bring Bob to keep me company. It occurred to me that Waldo Butters had to be the only man in the world to whom that made sense.

"I'll be around until morning," Waldo told me. "Just let me know if you need something."

I considered him for a long moment. The image of his soul, warm and comforting, flooded right back to mind.

_Once you See something with the Sight,_ Bob had said,_ you're stuck with it forever._

I was stuck with a lot of images. Not all of them had come to me supernaturally. But for once in my life, I was glad to have this one.

"Thanks, Waldo," I said. "Really. I won't forget this in a hurry."

Waldo looked away from me, pleased but clearly flustered. "Yeah. Um. No problem." He shot me a wavery smile. "G'night, Karrin."

A good five minutes after he'd closed the door, Bob's little eye-lights slowly kindled back on again. I had the feeling he had taken my warning to heart.

"Something feels different about you," Bob said. His voice was quiet now, like a sigh on the air. "Did you crack your Third Eye again already?"

I sighed. "Yeah, for a bit. I don't guess there's some kind of exercise I can do to strengthen it again? Like… physio for the brain?"

Bob made a little _hm_. "Guess it couldn't hurt," he said. "I could go back over some of the exercises you forgot. Most of those lessons were on the assumption you'd eventually get some magic of your own, but it's not like it would _hurt_ you to learn 'em anyway."

I chewed on my lip. "Yeah. About that. Would you be willing to go through _all_ of that again? All the knowledge and the facts. Like… back to elementary school, you said." I rubbed at my jaw. "I know it's a lot to ask. And I wouldn't want to ask for free, exactly. But I don't know what I could give you in return."

Bob's little eyelights blinked in surprise. "Uh… huh. That's a weird question. I don't think anyone's ever tried to _pay_ me before." He ruminated on that. Then, sheepishly, he said: "Can I get back to you? Like… just call it an unspecified favor for now."

I nodded. "Yeah, that works." I had a feeling it was a bad thing to make an open-ended promise like that, but some weird half-remembered part of me was still a little kid talking to Uncle Bob. There was trust and affection there, however deep it had been buried.

"You want to start now?" Bob asked.

I grimaced. "Not like I'm doing much else at the moment. May as well take advantage."

"What about the nerd outside?"

"I guess we'll just have to keep it quiet." I frowned. "And Bob?"

The golden lights flickered expectantly.

"You are literally the ultimate nerd. Stones and glass houses and all that."

He didn't have a ready response to that one. I heard him grumble a few times, before he said: "Fine. Let's talk about magic."


	12. Chapter 12

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Twelve_

"_Who are you really?"_

_I blinked slowly. My head was spinning. I knew there was a good reason I shouldn't answer the question, but the connection between my thoughts and my mouth seemed to have been temporarily severed._

"_I'm Detective Karrin Murphy, with the Chicago P.D."_

_Bianca smiled pleasantly at me, but I could see the black eyes and rubbery skin beneath her skin-suit. She took another sip of her port. My stomach rebelled at the sight of the dark red stuff disappearing past her lips. "Why are you here, Detective Murphy?"_

"_I…" I struggled against the question harder, trying to regain control of my mouth, my sanity, my life. But those black eyes bore into me, tugging at the strings of my mind. I didn't know how to stop them. "I'm investigating the murder of Jennifer Stanton."_

"_Fascinating," Bianca said. She leaned forward in her chair. That deep red port glistened on her lips. "You must know quite a lot about the case, then. Please, tell me everything you've discovered so far."_

_The walls sighed with ecstasy. A woman's voice screamed in horror. I saw shades of the creature in front of me, feeding from a human being's wrist._

"_Detective. I won't ask again."_

_I swallowed down bile. "She died along with Tommy Tomm — one of Johnny Marcone's enforcers. The two of them were intimate at the time. Their hearts exploded from their chests. I don't understand how."_

_Bianca tapped long, wicked fingernails against her port glass. I saw them as claws._

"_You wouldn't understand, of course," Bianca observed. "But you don't need to. I have far better people than you tracking down the murderer." Her black eyes widened upon me, dragging me in like sticky tar. "Who knows that you're here, Detective?" She purred the words consideringly, and some part of me realized she was gauging whether anyone would miss me._

"_My partner Ron. The Lieutenant." I paused. "Johnny Marcone. He all but dared me to come here."_

_The last name made Bianca twist her mouth in distaste. She stood up from her chair. "What a bother," she said. "Did he send you here so I would kill you for him?"_

"_I don't know," I said honestly._

"_Well." Her lips pursed. Claws scraped against glass. A shade whimpered, begging on its knees in front of her. "I have no interest in doing Johnny Marcone's dirty work for him. If he expects he can send every little bit of inconvenient trash my way, he is going to be sorely disappointed."_

_She set down her glass, and beckoned me forward. I staggered to my feet, and got down on my knees._

_Sharp fingernails gripped my wrist delicately. Pain pierced my skin. Then… ecstasy._

_I'd never felt anything nearly so pleasurable. I doubted I ever would again. I watched the spiritual essence of my blood disappear between her lips, strengthening her body._

_I slumped in disappointment as she let me go, though another part of me was aghast, horrified at the sight of her true form._

"_Forget this conversation," Bianca told me, licking at her lips. "Go home and sleep. When you think of this place from now on, it will be with fear. You know that you should not return."_

_Someone helped me outside the gate. The mansion passed me by with threads of passion, fear, bloodlust, need. I had to go home. I had to sleep. I shouldn't come back._

_The city was overwhelming, though. I couldn't figure out the way, through all the shadows that surrounded me. Instead, I saw a distant light, and remembered the image of a white temple, a merciful angel, a guaranteed comfort._

_I turned my steps toward the light in the distance, and started walking._

0-0-0-0

I woke up to Waldo's hand on my shoulder.

"Hey. Sorry, um. I got a call from work. I have to go in." I blinked blearily, trying to figure out where and when I was.

Waldo looked down at me, concerned. The faint light coming in from outside lit up his face. I guessed it was maybe an hour or so after sunrise. I forced myself up, rubbing at my eyes.

After the shortest magical crash course in history, Bob had run me through some mental exercises to strengthen my control over what I was beginning to call my leaky brainpan. I'd fallen asleep halfway though one of them. No wonder my dreams had gone wonky — the exercises had shaken something loose.

"Everything okay?" I asked dimly.

Waldo looked uncertain. I was tired — but not so tired that I didn't notice his evasiveness. Waldo Butters just didn't have a very good poker face.

"You called in time off," I said. "If they're calling you back in, it's for a good reason."

Waldo sighed. "We've got another body related to one of my previous autopsies," he admitted.

My blood ran cold. He wouldn't say it out loud, but I knew. "It's a body on _my_ case," I said. "Someone else died."

"That's not your responsibility," Waldo told me. "Really, it's not." He gave me a worried look. "I wanted to give you a quick checkup before I left. You can go right back to sleep after that."

I tried to press him for more information as he checked me over, but Waldo rebuffed my attempts with a polite, gentle firmness that made me feel a little bit like a child for even trying.

"Take it easy today," Waldo told me, as he finished up. "You should technically be getting out of the hospital right around _now_. Please consider acting like it?" He gave me a wan sort of smile. "I'll have my phone if you really need something." He paused. "Something _other_ than work."

I might be stubborn, but I know when an angle isn't working. Waldo wasn't going to give me anything directly just because I kept asking. I sighed. "Fine, sorry," I said. "Force of habit. I'll try to get some more rest."

Waldo beamed at me, and I felt a bit guilty. Naturally, I had zero intention of staying in bed. "Oh!" he said. "I left something on the table for you. I hope you and your skull enjoy it."

I raised an eyebrow, but he didn't stick around to explain. Instead, he headed out of the bedroom, and I heard him gather up his things and close the front door behind him.

Bob's eye sockets lit up sleepily. "Lazybones," he mumbled accusingly. "You said you were just gonna practice meditating. Meditation doesn't involve _snoring_."

I snorted. "I _meant_ to meditate. Cut me a break, I got poisoned." I considered him, though. "I think I got something out of it anyway. I remembered some stuff from the Velvet Room. Maybe Bianca's not as good at hypnotism as she thinks."

Bob's little eye lights rolled. "You're not that good either, grasshopper," he told me. "You said your Sight cracked open that night. _No one_ is powerful enough to erase things you've Seen with your Third Eye. She might have buried those memories some, but they were bound to spring back eventually. You caught a lucky break."

I grimaced. For a second, I'd felt a little proud of my achievement, but Uncle Bob sure was quick to cut me back down to size. "Fine," I said. "I caught a lucky break. Either way, now I'm _sure_ Bianca isn't involved in the murders, even peripherally. She said she had other people looking into it for her. I doubt she lied about that, given she was about to erase all my memories."

"Ooh boy," Bob said. "Goodie. That means you get to watch out for a warlock _and_ some vampire's lackeys." He paused. "I mean, I'm assuming you're about to go do exactly what you just said you _weren't_ going to do. Am I right?"

"You're right," I sighed. "I feel a little bad about it, but I don't think there's a great way to sum up the situation right now. I'll come up with some way to ease Waldo into it all later."

The golden glow in Bob's eye sockets wavered some at that. "What, you mean you're gonna tell him the truth?" He sounded a little upset, which surprised me. "Just how many people are you planning on letting in on the supernatural, kid?"

I frowned. "As many as I have to in order to stay in one piece," I said. "Why? Is there a problem with that?"

"The supernatural doesn't _like_ having its cover blown, kid," Bob told me. "Sure, there's an in-the-know community, but it's mostly people who've got someone powerful behind them who'd care if they went missing or forgot a bunch of stuff overnight. Let's just say, for example, if some unnamed vampire found out your memory wasn't as foggy as she thought it was… maybe she'd decide she was better off with you dead after all. And, you know. Anyone _else _you told."

I let that sink in slowly. _Damn._ It made sense now that I thought about it, but it meant I really was going to have to reassess my approach to… well, everything. Not just this case, but all the stuff beyond it, too.

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. "...yeah," I admitted. "I'm gonna have to think on that."

Bob let out a little sigh of relief. "A little more thinking never did anyone any harm," he said. "I mean. I'm biased, obviously."

I cracked a smile. "Yeah," I said. "You're kind of a bonehead."

Bob snickered obligingly. "Actually," he said, "I'm an _air_head."

I had the weirdest sense like I ought to be high-fiving the skull in front of me, but that was a tough call when one of the two of us had no hands. I settled for patting him on the top of his crown instead. "I'll put you in the living room before I go. You want to watch TV while I'm gone?"

"Oh, _please,_" Bob said eagerly. "Do you get PBS?"

I blinked. Right. Bob had gone into storage when I was still a kid. He didn't even know about cable television.

"I've got plenty more than _that_," I told him.

0-0-0-0

I left Bob the skull nestled between two couch cushions, watching the Discovery channel on my grandmother's old TV. In the process, I discovered that Waldo had left his cd walkman and headphones on the table, along with a handful of polka albums. I snorted, and tugged the headphones over my neck. I _had_ promised to brush up on my polka, after all, and I owed the M.E. more than ever, now.

My department car was presumably still parked out front at the Varsity, and my motorcycle was at the station, so I had to call a cab to get me where I was going. I probably could have managed with public transit, but I knew I was pushing my physical limits already, and taking the long way with a bunch of people pressed into my personal space made me miserable just thinking about it.

As I slunk into the precinct, feeling distinctly haggard around the edges, I immediately realized I wasn't going to be sneaking anywhere. A half-dozen faces turned my way within the first ten seconds of my entrance, with an equal number of raised eyebrows. I stuffed my hands into my jeans pockets and ducked my head, heading for my desk.

_Damn it._ My case files were already missing. I'd hoped I might be able to make a few copies, maybe check to see if something else about the new victim had landed on my desk — but Carmichael had clearly already moved everything.

"What the hell, Murph?" Two minutes flat, and someone had already ratted me out to my partner. I took a deep breath, praying for patience, and turned to look at Carmichael. He'd stumbled out of the break room, probably disturbed from a much-needed nap. "You're supposed to be in bed."

"Just picking up my stuff," I said warily. "You didn't have to come say hello."

Carmichael narrowed his eyes. "Must be some important stuff," he said, not bothering to hide his skepticism.

I held up my motorcycle keys. "I'm not leaving my ride here indefinitely," I said. "God knows what you donut-munchers will do to it."

"Uh-huh." His skepticism didn't vanish. "You good enough to drive a bike right now?"

I shrugged. "No one said I _couldn't_." I eyed him consideringly. "But while I'm here, maybe I ought to fill you in on the Varsity."

Carmichael groaned. "See, this? This is why I hung up on you. Jesus, Murph, I like your hard head most of the time, but you're gonna get the union involved if you keep acting like this—"

"You're gonna have to hunt me down and ask eventually anyway," I replied. "I'm just trying to make your job easier while I'm here."

Carmichael sighed and shook his head. "Fine. Conference room. You've got five minutes to give me the details. _And_ you better go get me a coffee. You interrupted my beauty sleep for this shit."

I grinned. "I'd say you should give it a rest already, but I guess you just woke up."

Carmichael blinked. He rubbed at his eyes. "Am I still dreaming, or did you just _pun_, Murph?"

I winced. _Ugh_. He was right. "Damn it, Bob," I muttered. "You've turned me into a monster." Carmichael raised his eyebrows, and I dodged the question. "I'll go grab us some coffees," I said.

0-0-0-0

Carmichael's grumpy face barely lightened, even after he drained his first full cup of coffee. I lingered over mine; even the crappy precinct coffee tasted divine right now, but the caffeine just wasn't sitting well in my stomach.

"Well?" he asked. "Give me the short version."

I hesitated. _Great._ I'd offered to debrief with Carmichael on the spot as a way of stalling for time, but I hadn't entirely thought through what I was actually going to say to him. The reality of what had happened, giant scorpions and all, didn't strike me as something on the table.

"I got to the bar on time. Marcone had me patted down for wires, but he didn't take my gun. There was a dead scorpion on the table; he said someone left it on his desk at the Varsity as a warning." I chewed carefully on my next words. "I thought I was about to get something out of him, but… things get weird and fuzzy after that. Someone went for Marcone. I think they stabbed me. I started hallucinating big-time."

Carmichael frowned. "Dead scorpion still sounds like something," he said. "You think it might be some symbolic thing? You ever heard of that before in organized crime?"

I shook my head. "Marcone seemed to think it was like… a talisman. Like someone really was trying to put a spell on him." I searched Carmichael's face for any small sign of credulity, but — predictably — I was disappointed. He rolled his eyes dramatically.

"Great," he said. "So we've got voodoo drug-dealing gangsters now. I guess that still narrows things down some."

I pressed my lips together. "Okay," I said. "I spilled. Your turn. You gonna tell me who the other victim was, Ron?"

Carmichael hissed out a curse. "God damnit," he said. "I knew it. I _knew_ you couldn't keep your nose out of it. Who told you?"

"No one _told_ me," I said. "I figured it out. I'm a detective like that."

Carmichael shook his head. "No. No dice. Go home, Murph."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "What are you, my mother or my partner? Don't tell me you wouldn't be doing the same in my position, Ron. I just want to know who died."

"Why?" he demanded. "No, don't answer that, I know why. You want to blame yourself for not solving it quicker, for being in a hospital. You want to blow the rest of your health hoping you can stop it from happening again. Well, I'm not interested in helping you do that, Murph. The whole world isn't your responsibility. Sometimes, _you're_ your responsibility. If you can't learn that, you're gonna end up with a gun in your—"

He cut himself off abruptly. But I knew the rest of what he'd been about to say.

"A gun in my mouth," I said. There was a cold, hard anger in my gut. "Yeah, Ron. I happen to know a thing or two about that."

Carmichael swallowed, and looked away. "I wasn't thinking," he said quietly. "Could've phrased it better. But I meant it. You're circling burnout, Murph. You gotta do everything _so_ right, you won't even cut yourself some slack, let alone anyone else."

I clenched my jaw. "Oh, hell," I said. "I guess you've got me all figured out." I leaned in toward him. "Here I thought my problem was that everyone _else_ was cutting themselves too much slack, passing dud cases off to S.I. and making backroom deals with fucking mobsters. I thought my problem was that I kept having to pick up everyone else's _slack_, Ron. But you've opened up my eyes."

Carmichael recognized the danger in my voice. He held up a hand. "Murph," he started. But I was tired and angry and scared, and I was entirely too far gone to recognize how far he'd pushed me.

"Shut up, Ron," I said. "You started this. You're right, okay? I'm too uptight. I wouldn't sell drugs. I wouldn't even look the other way. That's what got me doped up and killed my career. My fault entirely." My chewed-down fingernails were digging into my palms now. "I'm sneaking back into my own precinct on sick leave because I'm a _workaholic_, not because I think my Lieutenant is corrupt enough to pin my case on the first convenient target he finds, and certainly not because I gotta wonder which of my asshole coworkers is gonna leak all the case details to a mobster who likes to get into shootouts in the middle of the street. That's me, _burning out_, Ron."

"That is not what I meant," Carmichael shot back. He was on his feet now. "That is not what I meant and you damn well know it, Murph. You need to step back. I am normally the last person to say that to _anyone_, but you are not all right, and you haven't been since you got here. I am asking you to _trust_ me to handle your stuff while you figure your shit out, because that's my job as your partner."

I shoved to my feet to match him. "I don't have shit I need to figure out," I hissed. "I've _got_ it figured out. I'm trying to do the right thing, and the more I do, the more miserable I am. That's not me being neurotic, Ron. That's me realizing how fucking lonely it is to think there even _is _a right thing, let alone bother chasing after it. Sitting at home alone isn't going to make everyone else magically face down what two-faced, hypocritical sons-of-bitches they are. No one's gonna start doing their damn job just because I get some more shut-eye. And my partner isn't going to promise not to call in the mob, because he thinks _having standards_ looks too much like a deathwish."

I was going too far, I _knew_ I was going too far, but I couldn't stop. I felt like someone else had started running my mouth for me, and I was some audience member sitting at the back of my head, watching in mute horror.

I knew Carmichael had a point. I knew he was a decent guy trying his goddamned best to thread the needle between corruption and suicidal morality. I even knew, deep down, that he had a point about my deathwish, and that was something I was going to have to face down someday soon.

But I also knew I was telling some version of the truth. I was tired, broken, and desperate for validation in the face of death for purely rational reasons. Every time I'd tried to grasp at some faith in humanity, I'd been let down hard, and had my nose bloodied to boot.

I had to believe there was a point to doing the right thing. I _had_ to. Otherwise, why the hell had my father gone through all that misery and endured so much, only to break from the strain at the very end? If there wasn't a right thing, then why the hell had he died chasing after it?

My last shred of faith in even that tiny ideal was finally starting to unravel.

Carmichael was still staring at me. And I was still going off on him, with that strange autopilot running the show.

"Maybe," I said, "just _maybe_, if I had half an inch of faith that I could leave you to do the job without copping out, I'd be perfectly happy sitting in bed recovering. Then we'd both be happier, because you wouldn't have to worry about another poor, neurotic Murphy eating their gun, Ron."

Carmichael swallowed. I knew I'd hit him hard. I couldn't help but know. My chest was tight with anger, guilt, shame, misery. My stomach was twisting, and I knew I might heave up that little bit of coffee any minute now.

I knew I'd fucked up, even before I felt my conscious mind take back the driver's seat. I knew there were things wrong with what I'd said, but I couldn't figure out which _parts_ were wrong, and I was too dizzy and scared to face the things we'd said. The idea of trying to figure out how to _fix_ things was so suddenly overwhelming that I staggered back from the table, breathing hard.

"...your case," I said hoarsely. "It's your case. Just fucking take it." I backed away for the door.

We were both equal cowards. Carmichael didn't try to stop me as I left.


	13. Chapter 13

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Thirteen_

I got on my bike and drove.

It wasn't the best idea. I knew it even as I did it. But I was suffocating, and I needed the hell out of the precinct. The further away I drove, still dizzy and nauseous, the more I became aware that the job I'd put in my rear view mirror was poisoning me. As sure as the scorpion venom, this shit was going to kill me, the same way it had killed my father.

The problem was, I didn't know how to stop it.

Some part of me wondered whether this was how my father had felt, right before he'd given up. Maybe Carmichael was right to worry. I'd never been this low before, and I knew I had yet to find the bottom.

My Third Eye wasn't cracked, but I was messed up enough that I guess I should have expected where I'd end up.

Saint Mary of the Angels still inspired such a weird clash of emotions in me. If it was possible to feel simultaneously safe and serene, and utterly bitter and disillusioned, that's the taste it gave me looking at it. As a kid, I'd always thought the giant round window that looked out onto the street was shaped like a daisy. Though I was now pretty sure it had some kind of actual religious, symbolic significance, some silly part of me still saw that simple, childish flower in the window, and felt comforted.

I climbed the stairs and slipped inside. I hated myself for it. I was disappointed in myself for it. But I'd only ever Seen two beautiful things with the Sight, and since one of them was currently dissecting a body at work, Saint Mary seemed to have won my attentions for the moment.

I settled into one of the pews near the back. After a moment's thought, I pulled the headphones onto my ears and leaned back, closing my eyes.

Never in a hundred years did I think I would say this, but something about the sound of polka made me feel just a little bit better.

I let myself drift off, soaking in the feel of that forbidden spiritual safety and the cheerful downbeat of what I thought was probably a tuba.

Eventually, I became aware that someone was sitting next to me. Had _been_ sitting next to me for a while. I opened my eyes, and saw Father Forthill leaning back into the pew, his hands folded in his lap.

I tugged down the headphones. Some perverse instinct made me decide not to turn off the music, so the polka filtered across the air between us, as it had done in the hospital before.

Forthill turned to consider me with worried eyes. He couldn't help but pick up on the music though, and he frowned. "Karrin," he said. "Are you… listening to polka in church?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Is there a commandment against that?" I asked. "I could swear I memorized all of those."

He blinked. "No. I don't think it's a sin… though perhaps it ought to be."

Normally, I think that would've gotten a tiny smile out of me, even considering the source. But I didn't have any smiles left today. In my current state, I couldn't be sure I would ever scrape up a smile again.

Forthill saw it in my face. "...Karrin," he said softly. "Would you like to talk about it?"

I shook my head slowly. There was a knot in my throat. "I don't think _you_ want to talk about it," I said. "You wouldn't like what I have to say."

The old priest closed his eyes. He took a long breath. When he opened his eyes again, I saw a steel resolve in them. "I'll endure," he said. "I promise."

0-0-0-0

"We both know how long it's been since my last confession."

I leaned back into the hard confessional wall, crossing my arms. I wasn't angry anymore. I was just… worn out. Like a rag torn to tiny, fraying bits.

"Do you intend to confess and serve penance?" Forthill asked me curiously.

"No," I said. "I'm not Catholic anymore."

"Then I don't think we need to go through the formalities," he said. "I just thought you might feel more comfortable and private in here."

I chewed on that. He was right. There was something about sitting in the dark, talking through the screen, that made it easier to say things out loud.

"...okay," I said. I pressed my head into the corner. "I've lost my faith. In everything. I believed in my father, and he broke. I believed in God, but he turned out to be an asshole. I tried to believe there was something inherently worthwhile about humanity, but we're such laughably cosmic fuckups, I can't even say that with a straight face anymore." I was silent for a long moment, as I tried to put my latest crisis into words. "...I believed there was a point to being a good person. But trying to do the right thing just feels like I'm screaming uselessly into the void. I'm honestly just not sure what's left."

Forthill thought quietly on that. "...faith, hope, and love are not merely the building blocks of the church," he said finally. "They are sustenance to our souls. Without them, we wither and die, as surely as we die from diseases of the body." I heard him shift on the other side of the screen. "You've lost your love for humanity, so you cannot fight for love. You have no hope that things will improve, so you cannot fight for hope. You no longer have faith that there is a point to your suffering, in the absence of the other two."

I shrugged. "I guess so," I said. "I'd have used a few more curse words, but that works."

His silhouette nodded. "Then you must find one of these three again, and hold it close. Is there anything you can think of in the recent past which made you happy or fulfilled, if only for a moment?"

I closed my eyes. I thought of Waldo, terrified of fragility but courageous enough to walk into a hospital room for a friend. I thought, strangely, of Bob's stupid, silly puns, and the honest, enthused way he'd greeted me when he first saw me after so many years away. I thought of the briefest child-like moment of wonder I'd felt when I'd been told that magic was real, that there was so much I still had to learn about it, before the reality that someone had killed with it — of _course_ they had — had dragged me back down to earth.

That led me to the satisfaction of knowing I had one-upped Marcone. The gratification of killing a magical scorpion I shouldn't have had a chance in hell of squishing. The fulfillment of knowing that the Shadowman, with all his phenomenal power, had tried to kill someone and failed, solely because I'd put myself in his way.

"There's a handful of people," I said finally. "And there's… game theory. Aikido. The challenge, whatever you want to call it." I paused. "I take on arrogant assholes, people who should be way more powerful than me, and I make them eat dirt." I frowned dubiously. "That's not a great thing to live for, is it?"

Forthill shook his head. "It's not the worst thing to live for, either, in the absence of something better," he said. "It's a start." He hesitated. I felt the struggle in him, before he spoke again. "I know that you don't hold my opinion in very high regard lately. But for what it's worth, Karrin, I believe that there _is _a point. To everything."

I thudded my head against the wall. "Making God happy?" I asked bitterly. "That ship's sailed, Father. I don't give a damn about His opinion either. If He cares so much, He can get down here and do some dirty work with the rest of us."

Forthill sighed heavily. "I've had to do some soul-searching of my own," he admitted. "Perhaps, since we're being so informal, you won't mind if I confess a few things to you in turn."

I knitted my brow. That wasn't high up on the list of things I had expected to hear in the confessional today. "...sure," I said slowly. "I guess."

Forthill leaned his chin into his hand. "We've both dedicated our lives to institutions, Karrin. Those institutions chase ideals, worthy ideals. But just like human beings, institutions can fail." He took in a breath. "I fear that the church has failed you, Karrin. I've spent many years trying to reconcile that with the dedication and trust that I've placed in it myself." He paused heavily. "I've come to a conclusion. It's not a very satisfying one."

I straightened up slowly. "What's that?" I asked.

"I believe in my work," Forthill said. "I believe it's important, and that the church ultimately allows me to do more good than I could do on my own. But at the end of the day, I fear I hold a few beliefs that are… incompatible with doctrine. I think it's best that I confront that and accept it." He sighed. "I believe that God loves us, Karrin. There are reams of apologetics written on why it is He doesn't always help us when we need it. But at the end of the day, I can't know which of those is true. I want to believe that He _wants_ to help. That whatever the reason is that He doesn't, it's a good one."

I stayed quiet. I wasn't sure why, but the revelation of the Father's own troubles had soothed my misery just a little bit. The idea that I hadn't been the only one struggling all this time was a strange relief.

"I know this may not help you, Karrin. But I believe that God speaks to all of us. Scripture is a rough and unreliable translation sometimes, because human words weren't meant to capture His voice." Forthill leaned his head back into the wall. "He speaks with love. That need you have to do the right thing, to help others — that's God, whispering in your ear. I've spent the last few decades of my life learning how to listen to Him. Which is why… why I have done some things that some would say I should not have done."

My nose touched the screen. I hadn't realized I was leaning forward.

"On the day of your father's funeral, I heard God's voice in my heart," Forthill told me softly. "Your father wasn't weak, Karrin. He died of real injuries — wounds he received in the worthiest fight of them all. I knew that God wouldn't find it in Him to punish someone like that. So I must confess to you that I consecrated his grave after all, in direct contravention of everything I was taught."

I heard the words, but somehow they didn't fully penetrate. I had to replay them over and over in my mind, parsing them slowly.

There were tears on my face. I didn't know how they'd gotten there. In between moments, they'd just… appeared.

"I hope you can forgive me for not telling you sooner," Forthill said. He sounded genuinely anguished. "I was conflicted about my actions for a very long time. But perhaps, if I had told you sooner, it might have provided you some small measure of comfort when you most needed it."

Tears dripped down my chin. It wasn't a demure, pretty sort of crying, I knew. When I got out of that booth, I was going to be red-faced, snot-nosed sobbing. But I heaved in a breath.

"Thank you," I whispered. I barely managed to form the words. "Thank you."

I felt something in that moment. A tiny little blossom in my chest, unfolding outward. It was, I realized, the most miniscule shred of hope restored.

I'd been right to trust Father Forthill, once upon a time. The revelation that I could _still_ trust him took such a shocking weight off my shoulders.

I saw the Father wipe at his eyes. "I should have told you sooner," he said, this time more firmly. "Now that I have, I… I know that I did the right thing."

"I don't care if it was right," I choked. "I'd thank you anyway." I rubbed at my face. "I don't know if I believe in God, Father. But I can believe in you. That's a damned good start."

Forthill laughed weakly. "I don't know that I approve of that idea," he said. "But for now… if it brings you any solace, I'll take it."

0-0-0-0

I spent some time in the bathroom, washing down my face and trying to dispel the shakes that still plagued me. I was weak and spent, but the feeling was better than it had been. I'd found a little bit of ground on which to stand. I wanted to believe I could find a way to climb my way out of the gutter using that starting point, given time.

Father Forthill looked a bit more hale and steady when I came out. He smiled hesitantly at me, and I moved to hug him tightly.

It was a good feeling. I think we both needed it.

"Karrin," he said carefully. "Are you—"

"Yeah," I said. "Feeling better. A little, at least." I pulled back and took a long breath. "I've got some complicated questions I've got to answer. Probably some apologies to make. Definitely a killer to find."

Forthill nodded. A hint of relief crossed his face. He left his hand on my shoulder. "I'm here for you, Karrin," he said. "I hope you'll consider coming back more often, even just to talk."

I nodded slowly. "I think… yeah. I'm starting to get the impression I _should_ have been talking more up till now. Everything kind of… crept up on me."

The priest smiled wryly. "It's a common affliction," he said. "I seem to have fallen prey to it myself."

My phone made a pathetic little whining sound in my pocket. It took me a second to realize it was trying to ring. I frowned, and dug it out. The screen still flickered and spat, but I could just barely make out a number. I didn't recognize it, but that didn't mean much. I'd given a lot of people my number over the years.

"Sorry," I said to Forthill. "I'll just… make it quick."

He nodded, and I stepped away to answer. "Hello?"

"_Detective Murphy?"_ The voice on the phone was furtive, but familiar.

I frowned. "Monica?" I said. "Hey, is something wrong?"

"_You said to call you. If I needed anything."_ She paused. _"You said no cops."_

I straightened my posture abruptly. "Yeah, I did say that. I meant it. What do you need?"

"_I need you to… to take the kids. Somewhere safe."_ Her voice sounded frightened. I pressed my lips together. I didn't like that tone.

"Are you in danger?" I asked.

"_Not right now,"_ Monica said. _"But I need you to come soon. Now. During… during the day, while he's gone. Can you do that?"_

I took a deep breath. "Yeah. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"_Thank you. I… thank you. Just please hurry."_

The phone call cut out.

I shook my head, trying to think quickly. I couldn't move Monica and her kids on my motorcycle, let alone any necessities they might feel the need to pack. Frankly, I shouldn't have been driving at all, but I was hardly going to tell Monica to wait for another day.

A thought occurred to me. I turned back toward Forthill.

"Hey," I said slowly. "You mind if I borrow the church van for a good cause?"


	14. Chapter 14

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Fourteen_

Father Forthill insisted on driving the van. That was fair, considering my condition, and I figured he wasn't the worst person to have with me while I tried to wrangle a distressed woman and her two kids to safety.

I was glad I'd been paranoid enough to bring my backup firearm with me. After the giant scorpion incident, it just hadn't seemed like a good idea to go running around town without any firepower, but I didn't want to have to explain missing ammunition to the precinct later if I had to shoot at something weird again. I _really_ hoped I wasn't going to have to fire at a completely normal (if deranged and abusive) husband. But if it the situation came up, at least I'd be in a position to protect Monica and her kids.

Forthill gave me a bit of a side-eye as I counted bullets and checked the safety on the gun. I frowned at him. "Just being careful," I said. "I'm not expecting trouble, but I'm not counting it out either. If anything at all happens, I want you to drive away with the wife and kids, and then call the cops for backup."

"I've been in a scrape or two in my time," Forthill told me. "You don't need to worry on my account."

I tried not to let my skepticism show on my face. I can't do undercover work worth a damn, as I'd been so directly reminded recently, but I liked to think I had an okay poker face when I needed one. "I'm not worried about you," I said, glossing over it. "It's just better for everyone involved if the family gets out pronto, if something starts up. I sure as hell can't focus if I'm trying to keep an eye on the three of them in the middle of something."

Father Forthill nodded. "Of course. I understand."

My phone warbled pathetically, and I snatched it from my pocket to glance at the screen. It was Carmichael's number. I cringed. I deeply didn't want to answer, but I knew it was better if I did.

"Ron," I said, as I picked up the phone. "I'm not dead. You can stop freaking out."

"_Jesus Christ, Murph."_ There was a shaking in his voice that I wasn't accustomed to hearing. "_I didn't know what to do, whether I'd just fuck things up more if I called—"_

"Yeah," I muttered. "Don't worry about it." The worry in his voice put a sinking feeling in my chest. "I'm sorry I'm such a hot mess. I am. You didn't deserve that."

"_I… no, yeah, I did. We need to talk, Murph. Maybe it's time we put our cards out on the table—"_

I winced. "I'd like nothing better than to hash shit out with you, Ron, but I'm in the middle of something right now. I'm with a friend. I'll give you a call when I'm done."

I could tell Carmichael didn't like that answer. But he must have still been shaken from the morning, because he reluctantly knuckled under. "_...okay. Take your time, I guess. Just call me when you get the chance._"

Forthill gave me another sideways glance as I hung up, but he didn't say anything. I knew he wanted me to talk about it, but I wasn't ready for that. I'd already done more opening up that morning than I'd managed in years.

"Eyes on the road," I mumbled. "I'll cry to you about it some other day."

0-0-0-0

The two-story house hadn't much changed in the days since I'd last seen it. It still gave me the heebie-jeebies, in spite of its innocuous exterior. I wondered if I'd been subconsciously picking up on the trouble inside the house before.

Monica opened the door as I approached with Father Forthill. If Monica had seemed tired the first time I'd seen her, she was _exhausted_ now. Her body was shivering, in spite of the sweater she'd pulled on. Dark, puffy circles under her eyes told me she'd been crying a lot, and recently.

She blinked at Father Forthill, instantly on-guard. She hadn't been expecting him — she was already on edge, and he was something out-of-place.

"The Father's just going to help out some," I reassured her. "I'm under the weather, so he's driving."

Monica swallowed. She didn't have the energy left to protest. "Thank you for coming," she said. "I don't… I don't have anyone else left to call."

I frowned. "We can talk about what's going on once we're safely on the road. I know a shelter that can take you today, no questions asked. Did you grab the essentials?"

Monica nodded dully. "I've packed up the kids," she said. "They should be ready to go." She turned back inside the house. "Jenny!" she called back. "It's time to go! Can you get your brother, please?"

I heard footsteps on the stairs. A gangly little green-eyed girl appeared, holding her younger brother's hand. He was only a few inches shorter than his sister, but he showed his confusion and distress much more obviously on his face. Jenny was carrying two backpacks — her own and her brother's. She had a determined-looking expression on her face. I wondered if she'd seen this coming for a long time — whether it was a relief, of sorts.

"Jenny, Billy," Monica said softly. "This is Detective Murphy. She's going to take you somewhere safe."

I quickly noticed her omission. "Monica," I said. "You're coming too."

She shook her head, twisting her hands nervously in front of her. "I can't," she said. "It won't work that way."

Jenny's determined-looking expression melted into a confused panic. She reached out to grasp her mother by the arm. "Mom," she said urgently. "You have to come with us."

Billy went one step further, throwing his arms around his mother's waist in a vice-like grip. "I won't go without you!" he added hurriedly.

Monica blinked quickly. I'd thought she looked like a woman without anymore tears, but she managed to squeeze a few more out anyway. "I can't, sweetie," she said in a choked voice. "If I go with you, he'll find us, you know that."

Jenny looked over at me pleadingly. "You're a cop," she said. "Cops shoot bad guys. You can… you can just shoot him, right?"

"Jesus Christ." The words slipped out before I could stop them. I'd heard a lot of crazy things in my time, but hearing a kid talk with such eager desperation about killing her own dad was a brand new level of fucked up. What the hell had Victor Sells done to his family? "I, uh. I can't just _shoot_ someone," I said, deeply uncomfortable with the fact that I even had to explain such a thing. "If your father's done something illegal, and I can prove it, I can arrest him and take him to prison, though."

Jenny narrowed her eyes at me. "He killed Cinnamon Bun," she declared.

I knitted my brow at that. _Uh._

Monica shook her head at me. "Cinnamon Bun was her pet rabbit," she explained. "He went missing. Jenny thinks her father is responsible." She blinked rapidly as she said it, and twisted her hands more frantically.

_Jenny thinks, huh?_ I'd have laid odds in that moment that Victor Sells _had _done something nasty to little Jenny's pet bunny, but Monica didn't want to dwell on the matter. She wanted me gone with the kids.

"Please, just take them and leave," Monica begged. "That's why I called you. Victor has… he has ways of finding me. I just want to know the kids are safe."

"Mom—" Billy started, his voice already near-hysterical. But Monica cut him off with a strong hug.

"I love you both so much," she told her children. Her voice was close to breaking as she said it. "You have to go now, but… I'll come and find you when everything is okay."

Billy looked reassured at that, but Jenny was clearly a cynical kid. "You're lying," she accused her mother. "Don't lie! He'll hurt you if you stay here."

Monica pressed her hands to her mouth. She was on the verge of a full-on breakdown now. If I let the kids continue crying around her, things were going to devolve in a hurry.

I frowned at Jenny. "Get in the van," I told her. "I'm not leaving your mom alone, but we've gotta have an adult talk. Worst-case, you go with Father Forthill, I stay here with her, and…" I winced. "Maybe if your father doesn't feel like being reasonable, I shoot him after all."

I said it, even though it made me cringe. I knew it was one of the few things the kid wanted to hear — maybe enough to get her in the damn van, so I could talk her mother out of whatever suicidal bent she'd suddenly acquired.

Jenny glared at me. "Promise you won't let him hurt my mom," she said.

I held up a hand. "Promise," I told her. I didn't know what was going on, but I _did_ know I had no intention of walking away and hearing Monica's body had been found later.

Jenny hesitated, and I knew she was a lot more scared than she was letting on. "_Now_, kid," I said, putting some authority into my voice. "You want to hang out until your dad gets home, or you want to get a move on?"

That put the fear of god into her. Jenny pried her brother's arms off her mother, dragging him away toward the van outside. He started crying, and she did her best to shush him.

I gave Forthill a pained look. "Can you…" I gestured vaguely. "_Do _something?" I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a _kid_ person.

The priest nodded slowly. "I'll try to help them calm down," he said. He headed back for the van, and I turned back toward Monica.

"I'm not leaving you alone to deal with a guy who kills bunnies and gives you cigarette burns," I said flatly. "So we're gonna have to come up with a different plan. If you want any say in it, you better help me start brainstorming."

Monica sagged against the doorframe. Her hands were still pressed against her mouth. I saw tears in her eyes again, now that her children were out of sight. "There's nothing you can do for me," she whispered. "He owns me. But if the children are safe… that's all I need."

"Is he blackmailing you?" I asked. "Is that what this is about?"

Monica shook her head. "You wouldn't understand," she said. She closed her eyes, despairing. I saw her struggling to think through the fear. "...we can go somewhere else," she told me. "A different car, far away from the children." There was a resignation in her voice. She didn't think it was going to make a difference, but she knew she had to entertain me somehow.

It was something, at least. If I could get her away from the house, it would buy me some time to figure out what terrible thing Victor Sells had hanging over her head. "Fine," I said. "We'll catch a cab somewhere else, _anywhere_ else. Step one is just to get you out of here."

I pulled my phone out to order a cab — but the flickering screen had finally died entirely. I frowned, tapping it hard against my hand. "Damn it," I muttered. "Really? Right _now_, you choose to brick on me?"

Monica went pale. She turned inside the house — before I could ask her what she was doing, she'd turned on the porch light. It was guttering oddly. The look on her face told me that was significant.

"Get in the van, Detective," Monica said softly. She stared at the light as it flick-flickered unsteadily. "You'll only get hurt if you stay."

"_Don't be silly, Monica,_" a voice rasped from behind me. "_Neither of you can run from me now._"

I pulled my gun on instinct, before my thoughts could catch up with me. An instant later, I realized bullets weren't going to help me any more now than they had done before.

The shadow man stood behind me, the darkness of his body rippling and twitching like a swarm of insects.

_Oh my god,_ I thought. _I'm a moron._

I'd been so convinced I had the right trail. Why wouldn't I be? The drug war, the attack on Marcone, the giant scorpion… _everything _had pointed toward Tommy Tomm as the intended victim.

I'd forgotten that sometimes killers get two with one stone.

"Hey, Victor," I said to the shadow creature, with a hell of a lot more confidence than I felt. "Fancy seeing you here. _Again,_ now that I think about it." I paused, trying to think quickly. Witty one-liners might make for great stories, but they tend to escalate the situation and get people killed.

"You do know the Wardens are after you, right?" I bluffed. "I mean… if I was you, I don't know if I'd be throwing around flashy magic like it's going out of style."

A weird silence settled in at that. _He doesn't know about the Wardens,_ I thought. The bluff would have worked better if I hadn't needed to convince him of the danger in the first place, but now that I'd started down the road, I had to commit to it.

"Ouch," I said. "You're in it pretty deep. See, what you've been doing is illegal in more ways than one. You might think the mortal police aren't much of a threat, but if you'd really chewed on it, you would have realized there's gotta be a magical equivalent. One of the wizard police came by to take over jurisdiction on my case not long after we talked in the car. They're real hard cases, Victor. Did you know they carry _swords?_ Silver swords. Can't make this shit up."

Monica was staring at me with a mixture of shock and miserable hope. I felt a pang of guilt. She thought I had the wizard police on speed dial or something — that someone more competent and powerful than me was going to come and save her.

"_Then I suppose I should make sure you can't tell them my identity,_" Victor snarled. He raised a hand. _"You killed a toy of mine. But now… I think it's time you got a taste of my true power._"

I sighed. If I was going to die, I thought, I may as well go down without regrets. "Really?" I asked. "Are you sure you're going with that one?" I paused, and surreptitiously clicked off the safety on my gun. "What about… _you haven't seen even a shadow of my true power?_ Or, uh… _you should never have darkened my doorstep_?" I pursed my lips thoughtfully. "God, the possibilities are endless. I can't believe you walked right past _all_ of them."

Monica gave a horrified, hysterical little giggle from the doorway. She'd finally cracked, I figured.

Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I felt the air get a little colder in my immediate vicinity. "_I am going to enjoy watching you die,_" Victor said.

"Without a shadow of a doubt," I said.

The strangled sound the shadow man made at that gave me a deep sense of satisfaction. I decided Bob was right: I needed more unapologetic puns in my life.

I raised my gun and shot at the apparition in front of me.

The bullet went straight through, of course. I wasn't expecting much else, but hopefully the sound would convince the Father it was time to get the hell out of dodge, whether he could see things clearly or not.

The shadows in front of me shivered with fury. I heard Victor's hissing voice intoning in a way that carried unnaturally through the air. "_Kalshazzak!_" he called. Then again: "_Kalshazzak! Kalshazzak!_"

Something wormed its way up from the shadows, clawing its way through them like something from an old horror movie. What ultimately crawled out looked like nothing I'd ever seen before in my life. Toadlike and foul, with eyes like blue lightning, it fixed a hateful expression upon the shadow man, hissing in defiance.

I felt the distant echo of Victor's power as he closed his will upon it, forcing it to heel. "_Kalshazzak!_" I heard him snarl. "_Kill them both!"_


	15. Chapter 15

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Fifteen_

I shot the toad thing in the face. The results were underwhelming.

My bullet ricocheted, and I found myself ducking for cover inside the house. Monica stared at it with wide, terrified eyes, unable to move. I grabbed her bodily, and hauled her out of the way, just as the thing that Victor had summoned opened its giant jaws wide and _vomited_ in our direction.

Liquid splashed against the door, hissing and spitting where it ate away at the wood.

"Of course!" I gasped out. "Bullets don't work on anything important, silly me. Should've brought a goddamn sword!"

Monica was crying, which should not have surprised me. She'd lost the ability to stand on her own, and become dead weight. Pity and resentment mixed inside me at that. I shoved it down and dragged her to her feet. "_Move!_" I yelled. "Freak out later!"

She found some kind of third wind at my shouting in her ear. I dragged her toward the back of the house, trying to stay behind cover. Only a few seconds later, I realized that the monster should have been on us already… but it wasn't.

I risked a look at the door, worried that it had turned on the van. But instead, I saw the thing leaning against the thin air of the doorway. The air warped around it, wavering, as though it was trying to push through jello.

I didn't know what was going on — all I _did _know was that it had bought us a bit of time. I dragged Monica for the sliding door at the back of the living room that looked out onto the pool in the back yard.

"Go out the back and head around to the van," I told her. "I'm going to distract it to give you time."

Monica nodded speechlessly. She might have been resigned to some terrible fate earlier, but it was a lot easier to give up when _terrible fate_ wasn't physically present and spitting acid at you.

I pulled open the sliding door and shoved her through. As she stumbled for the back gate, I surveyed my options bleakly. There were a few knives in the kitchen, but whatever I'd joked about swords, I didn't figure I could dole out more pressure per inch with a knife and my muscles than I could with a bullet and some gunpowder. I remembered the bucket of chemicals Monica had been using to stress clean, and I ducked for the kitchen to rummage through cabinets.

I started pulling out bottles blindly. The pressure in the house dropped; my ears popped abruptly, and I assumed the thing had gotten through whatever was holding it back.

The shadows next to me shifted. "_Here, Kalshazzak,_" the shadow man hissed. "_Come and get your dinner._"

I grabbed a big bottle of bleach and scrambled back out of the kitchen, just as another gout of acid splashed across the linoleum floor where I'd been. It tore so deeply into it that I saw the concrete beneath.

Kalshazzak, whatever it was, had rounded the corner. Now that I wasn't ducking out of its way, I realized it was just about my height, in spite of its massive frog-like jaws. It _almost_ looked human, if I squinted enough. There was a slick, mucous-like membrane on its dark skin, though, and the acid that dripped from its mouth was a bright electric yellow.

I never was the best at high school chemistry. But once, when I was a beat cop, I helped clear an entire family out of their little matchbox apartment. Everyone was coughing, gasping, running red at the eyes — their mom had used the wrong cleaning products together without thinking. That was the day I found out you don't mix bleach with ammonia… or _any_ acid, really.

I rushed the toad-like thing before it could choke up more acid from its stomach. I tore off the bottle's cap and shoved the whole thing between the monster's gaping jaws.

Kalshazzak might have been bulletproof… but it did _not_ like the taste of bleach.

The monster reared back with a tortured scream as the bleach interacted with the acid in its mouth. It clutched at its eyes with clawed hands, tearing at the skin there as all kinds of obscure chemical reactions went off in its mouth and sinuses, prompting invisible burning fumes.

I didn't stop to gloat. I turned to run for the back door, while Victor's shadow screamed profanities in my wake.

Kalshazzak lashed out blindly; its talons caught my arm, and I choked in agony. The edge of its claw had sliced through my skin like butter. I lashed out, slamming down on its elbow joint to try and get loose, but I realized too late that its anatomy wasn't quite human; the joint bent backward with ease, instead of breaking.

The stink of its chemical breath made me woozy close up. I knew I needed to make another run for it, but I was gagging too hard. Kalshazzak looked down at me with hateful, stinging eyes, still spitting out bleach, and I suspected I was about to stop having to worry about anything at all, ever again.

As it turns out, I was wrong.

I heard Father Forthill's aged voice shouting in Latin. Kalshazzak staggered again, loosening its grip on me. I stumbled back, bleeding, shaking, and nauseous, as Father Forthill brandished his rosary toward the monster.

"Back, demon!" the Father commanded, in a voice more assured than I had ever heard from him before. "You are not welcome on this plane!"

I wasn't sure whether I was stunned because I was sick or because Forthill's approach was actually _working_.

Kalshazzak continued flinching back from the priest, hissing and gurgling. I backpedaled quickly in turn, nearly slipping on a patch of my own blood.

Forthill gestured urgently toward the back door. I looked between him and the monster. Kalshazzak was shying away from the Father's impromptu exorcism, but it didn't seem _hurt_ by it. If I left the Father alone with it, I suspected he wouldn't survive the encounter.

I swallowed down my dizziness and pain. A mad thought floated to the top of my mind, born of the sorts of bizarre questions a young Karrin Murphy had once asked in Sunday School.

"Father!" I yelled. "You can bless _any_ liquid, right?"

Forthill continued speaking urgently in Latin… but I thought I saw him nod his head incrementally.

"Great!" I told him. "Push it toward the back door!"

I backed up to yank open the door to the yard. The pool was sparkling clean and smelled of fresh chlorine, thanks to Monica's cleaning spree a few days ago.

I looked around for something to use… but instead, my eyes found Jenny Sells, standing at the back door with a large shovel in her hands. I barely ducked the swing she took at my head, yelling in surprise.

The kid stumbled back, blinking. "Oh, oh!" she managed. "It's you, I'm sorry!"

"_What are you doing here?_" I demanded. "Oh my god, get in the fucking van!"

Should I have been swearing? I don't know. It struck me as a swearing sort of situation. Look, I _said_ I'm no good with kids.

Jenny looked inside. As she saw the demon, she went pale with fear. But I saw her square her shoulders. "He told it to kill Mom!" she said. "I'm not gonna let it!" She reached out to pick up the shovel again, clearly intent on a militant last stand. I managed a dim, distant sense of admiration for that. There's not that many _adults_ in this world willing to face down a monster like that. The kid had guts. Or maybe a deathwish.

Come to think of it, I probably wasn't the best person to judge.

"Drop the shovel!" I told her. "Grab the hose instead!"

I reached for the garden hose with fingers still slippery from blood, trying to pull out some slack. Jenny quickly got the idea — she grabbed another side, backpedaling and dragging it out into a line in front of the door.

"When it comes out," I told her, "you help me tangle it up! Just circle around with me, you know the drill!"

Kalshazzak stumbled out the door toward us. It was done with whimpering; though there were still horrid chemical burns all over its face and jaws, it was now growling with a low fury again, as the Father forced it out the door. I yanked the garden hose tight with my good arm, tangling it up with the thing's legs.

Jenny took the cue. I wasn't sure she'd really have the courage when it came down to it — but the kid ran right past Kalshazzak, darting like a little mouse, coiling the other end of the garden hose around its waist as it flailed. I took the opposite direction, pinning its arms against its sides. It was the most childish, ham-handed way to trap a monster, but god damn if it wasn't _working._

As it continued stumbling backward, I threw myself forward, tucked my shoulder underneath its back… and flipped it into the pool.

"Get to praying!" I gasped at the Father. "_Now!_"

The toad-thing thrashed in the pool, less happy there than I would have imagined. It was still tangled in the garden hose, but I knew it would find its way loose in no time. I grabbed the shovel and slammed it into the thing's face, trying to keep it in the water. Behind me, I heard the Father's frantic prayers. I figured he was setting a world record for the fastest Catholic ritual ever.

"—_si quid est quod aut incolumitati habitantium invidet aut quieti, aspersione hujus aquæ effugiat,_" he gasped out, gesturing toward the little suburban swimming pool.

As I took another swing with the shovel, Kalshazzak chomped down on the end of it, tearing through the metal end like so much paper. I threw the useless wooden haft at the creature; it bounced off its head.

"—_ut salubritas, per invocationem sancti tui nominis expetita—_" I honestly wasn't sure whether Forthill had even taken a breath.

Jenny had taken to grabbing anything she could get her hands on. A tin watering can thudded into the monster. A camp chair. A pot of petunias. Nothing was really slowing it down, though — I saw it sink down into the water and set its clawed feet down on the bottom of the pool, gathering itself up to jump. I whimpered as I realized I was going to have to do something very stupid, very shortly.

"_Ab omnibus sit impugnationibus defensa—"_

The monster lurched up out of the water, just like the leaping toad it resembled. I jumped for its legs, wrapping my arms around them, trying to haul it down with my body weight. The thing overbalanced in mid-air. We both went tumbling into the water.

Chlorine stung madly at the open wound on my arm. The monster caught me across the chest. At first, I thought I that was it — with claws that sharp, it _had_ to have found something vital. But it must have been an awkward, backhanded hit, because all I got was the breath knocked out of my ribs, and a choking mouth full of water.

"_Per Dominum, amen!"_

The resulting scream was loud enough, I swear it must have echoed for miles.

I heard it clearly in my ears, even as I struggled and sucked in water. Nearby, Kalshazzak thrashed and screamed and burned, as though it had been dunked into a vat of its own acid.

Someone else jumped into the pool. A small hand closed on my arm, tugging me back with frantic swim kicks. A second later, Forthill's weaker, less steady hands joined in, hauling me out of the pool.

Jenny Sells pushed me onto my side with a great effort, and began to pound on my back.

Water came back up. I coughed and choked for air. The runt was _not _kidding around — I knew I was going to have bruises up my back when this was over with.

"Jenny! Oh my god, Jenny, what were you thinking—"

I heard Monica's voice above us, choked and sobbing. I shivered and groaned. Some of the adrenaline was wearing off, and my body was making its various displeasures _very_ well-known. I mentally apologized to Waldo for messing up his promise to keep me in bed.

"_I'll kill you!_" Victor's voice hissed. I couldn't tell who he was talking to — whether he was, in fact, talking to anyone in particular, or just raging in general. "_How dare you, how _dare _you—"_

"I hate you!" Jenny yelled at him. "Go away and leave us alone! Go away and die!"

I tried to force myself up to sitting. I was battered, bruised, and bleeding, but by god, I wasn't going to leave the kid to face her father's shadow alone.

Father Forthill stepped before me, strangely calm.

"You have projected your spirit and left your earthly body unprotected," he told Victor. "The demon that you summoned is no doubt aware of that. Now that it has been banished, it will tell its brethren where to find your empty shell." He lifted up the rosary once again. "Return, foolish sorcerer. Before we all regret your choices. _In nomine Dei._"

The Father flung a handful of blessed, over-chlorinated swimming pool water at the shadow before us — and it dissipated into greasy black smoke.

I flopped back onto my back, exhausted.

"You've been in a scrape or two, huh?" I said.

Father Forthill was polite enough to look embarrassed. "Well," he said. "Maybe more than two."


	16. Chapter 16

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Sixteen_

"Linda and Jennifer were trying to help me leave. They were blackmailing Victor with… with photos. Things that would embarrass him and his backers."

I tried to focus on Monica's words while Forthill hurriedly stitched up my arm on the living room couch. It was better than thinking about the sickening sight he was currently cleaning up. I wasn't sure, but I thought I might have seen a hint of bone.

"They _were_ trying to help you leave?" I said, in a strained voice.

"Linda is dead," Monica said tonelessly. She kept her voice soft, so the words wouldn't travel to the kitchen, where the kids had sit down. "Victor… he made sure to tell me he'd killed her. That he knew everything. He said if I disobeyed him again, he would kill me too."

"Well," I gritted out. "That doesn't seem to have worked out for him so well."

Monica cast her eyes downward. "He can still do it," she said. "He has my blood. He can find me no matter where I go. He can hurt me from any distance. And he's going to. He's going to kill me."

I leaned my head back into the couch, breathing in sharply. Everything hurt so damned bad — especially that fucking needle. But the idea that I'd only delayed the inevitable with all that misery pissed me off. "That's not going to happen," I told her. "I'm not gonna let it."

I was beat to high hell and barely functioning. I had no idea how I was going to keep that promise. But by god, I was gonna try.

Monica curled her legs underneath herself. I understood now why it was she looked so haggard. She'd used the right words before. Victor owned her.

"The Warden you talked about," she said, with a quiet hope in her voice. "Can they really stop him?"

I sighed heavily. I didn't want to snap that tiny thread of hope I'd given her. But I didn't want to lie, either. "There's no Warden," I said. "I mean… the Wardens are _real_. And they're going to come for him eventually. But I don't have any way of getting in touch with them."

A grim silence settled between us. I hated myself for having said it, but I couldn't take it back and lie now.

"...we don't need a Warden, though," I told her. "Victor's sloppy and not very bright. He's tried to kill me twice now, and failed both times. I'm ready to go three for three, if you tell me everything you know."

Monica sighed. "I may as well," she said. "I didn't want to drag you into this. But I doubt he'll let you go now."

"That's the spirit," I muttered.

Monica took a breath. "He's been making that drug. The one that makes you see things. It takes a lot of power, though. He says that fear — other people's fear — helps the magic. At some point, he figured out that sex works even better. He… he dragged me into it. He found other people to help."

I raised a tired eyebrow. "_Other people to help_," I repeated. "You're, uh. Talking about orgies?"

Father Forthill cringed on a stitch, and I yelped in pain. "Sorry," he said quickly. "Sorry." The Father might have been a lot better acquainted with the supernatural than I'd thought, but he was still a good old Catholic at heart when it came to certain uncomfortable matters.

"Yes," Monica admitted shamefully. She couldn't meet my eyes. "He asked me to call up my sister because of her work, to get her involved. I wasn't going to do it, but when Jenny figured out what was going on, she called up Victor herself. Her and Linda and Tommy Tomm… all three of them showed up. I didn't realize until later why she was doing it. Jenny and Linda got pictures of his rituals, of all the people there. They sent them anonymously to Victor, demanding that he let go of me and the kids. But he knew, obviously. He knew who was doing it."

I blew out a breath. _Damn_. That was ballsy. Blackmailing someone like Victor, knowing full well what he was capable of doing. "Do you think Tommy Tomm knew?" I asked.

"Maybe," Monica said uncertainly. "He and Jenny were in a kind of relationship. He didn't like her going to the rituals, but she wasn't going to stop. I think at some point he just decided to start going with her, to watch out for her. The Beckitts really didn't like that."

"The Beckitts?" I asked. The name immediately rang a bell, but I was done taking things for granted. I waited for Monica to confirm what I now suspected.

Monica nodded. "They're his biggest backers. He promised them revenge against the man who killed their daughter. The man Tommy works for."

Another puzzle piece snapped into place.

"Marcone," I said. "It _was_ his bullet that killed that little girl."

"I don't know everything," Monica admitted. "But I guess so." She rubbed at her arms. "I don't go to the rituals anymore. But I know where he holds them. We have a lake house in Michigan. He goes there when there are storms. There's something about the weather that makes his spells easier. I think it's how he killed… you know."

_Michigan. Shit._ It wasn't that far from where we were, but it was still across state lines. That complicated the hell out of things. There was no way I was going to be able to push for a warrant in another state in such a short time period, even if I'd had more proof than I currently did. The Michigan police would want to be involved in anything that happened on their turf, too.

If Monica was right — and I had no reason to think that she wasn't — I had until another storm hit to somehow drag Victor away from his lake house and put him in prison. Even then, I wasn't sure how I was going to drag him to court and keep him from busting out, given everything that he could do… but one damn thing at a time, I figured.

Forthill tied off the stitches and wiped them down with disinfectant. Once that was over with, I relaxed minutely. Everything still hurt, but at least I wasn't being stabbed anymore. He sighed. "I did what I could," he told me. "But you're going to need a proper doctor, Karrin."

"No time for that," I said. "Maybe later. In the meantime, you want to tell me how you got so calm about acid-spitting monsters?"

"Demons," Forthill corrected me. "That was a demon. And it happened in the way you might expect. Some of us in the church still perform exorcisms when necessary. I was much more active in my youth… but I advised your father directly more than once when you were growing up."

"My father?" That got my attention. "What's my father got to do with all of this?"

Forthill shook his head. "Your father got very involved in the supernatural after your mother disappeared," he said. "He seemed to believe it was relevant to her case. He never did find out what happened to her… but he still managed to save a good number of other people in his time. I tried to help him with that as often as I could." He frowned at me. "If I had realized you were involved with similar things now, I would have talked to you about it much sooner. Perhaps… perhaps it wasn't just chance that you found your way back to Saint Mary when you did."

"Well, if you've got any good advice for me now, I'm all ears," I told him. I carefully breezed past the suggestion of divine intervention. I still wasn't super comfortable with that idea.

Forthill grimaced. "I know a little bit about sorcerers," he said. "But they're not my speciality. Demons and some other spirits fear faith, but its effects upon sorcerers and their magic seems to be… intermittent. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn't."

He contemplated my condition, clearly uncomfortable with the idea that I was talking about jumping into yet another confrontation. "I know some more militant people in the area I might be able to call. I can't guarantee they'll be in town, but I will certainly try my best. I can take Monica and the children to the church and try to shield her from his magic. It may not be effective, but it's worth an attempt."

I pushed slowly to my feet. I was a weak, bloody mess, but at least I could still put one foot in front of the other. "All right," I said. "Let's do all of that. I need to stop at home to grab some stuff and make some calls of my own. We both know I'm not gonna be able to take on Victor alone in this state."

Monica rose from the couch. "I'll get you my cell phone," she said. "You can take it with you. If you don't come back, I doubt I'm going to need it."

0-0-0-0

I called Carmichael on Monica's phone, as Forthill drove us back in the van. I had to do it twice before he picked up. I figured he was still a little overwhelmed, and not in the mood for chatting with an unknown number.

"_Yeah, this is Detective Ron Carmichael,_" he muttered reluctantly.

"Ron," I said. "It's me. My phone's shot, so I borrowed this one for now. Some really crazy shit has happened in the last few days, and I'm working against a clock. I'm headed to my place now. I need you to meet me there."

"_I'll be there,_" said Carmichael. I was expecting him to ask more questions, but the instant promise gave me back a bit of heart.

"Thanks," I said. And I meant it.

"_See you soon, Murph._"

I tucked the phone back into my jacket pocket, and grimaced down at myself. I needed a change of clothing, among other things. I currently looked like a victim from a horror movie.

Carmichael was waiting outside of the house by the time we got there. He was asleep in the driver's seat of his car, and I managed a moment of sympathy for him. Normally, after those initial forty-eight hours, we'd be back on a relatively sane schedule again — but with two connected bodies in such a short time, the department was probably riding him hard to get things done.

"Get Monica to the church and do what you can," I told Forthill. "I'll call when we… well, if I _can_ call after this."

The Father nodded seriously. "I'll let you know if I can get in contact with anyone," he said. "Oh, and don't forget…" He reached into the cup holder to pass me a plastic sports bottle. I'd rummaged it up from Monica's kitchen and filled it up with pool water before we left. Just in case.

I managed a tired grin. "Thanks," I said. "I'll try to remember not to drink it."

The Father stepped out of the van briefly to hug me. I took some comfort in the moment. I knew a lot of very bad things were about to happen, and it was nice just to feel cared for before it all hit.

"Do you mind if I pray for you?" Forthill asked uncertainly.

I shrugged. "If I'm willing to take your holy pool water, I ought to be okay with you praying for me too," I said. "Go for it. Maybe it'll do something."

I pulled myself away, before I could get too comfortable. As I'd told Carmichael — the clock was ticking.

The van pulled away as I leaned down to tap on the glass next to Carmicahel's face. He blinked blearily awake — then sat up in his seat. I saw his eyes sweep my bloody clothing.

"Jesus, Murph," he said, as he pushed open the door and staggered out. "What chewed _you_ up?"

"You should see the other guy," I told him. I headed up the sidewalk toward the house, unlocking the door for the two of us. "You want to get stuff out on the table, now's the time. I'll start. I'm an asshole. I'm not okay, and I took shit out on you. I'm sorry for that. Once all this is over with, I'm gonna work on getting my head straightened out. It might take a while."

Carmichael sighed heavily. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "I said you weren't wrong, Murph," he told me. He got a grim air to him as we headed inside. He paused, though, as he heard the Discovery Channel in the living room. "You got company?" he asked, confused.

I glanced toward the living room. "I left the television on," I told him. "What was I right about, Ron?"

He winced, and leaned back against the wall. "Murph, I… shit. Look… I was the one passing Marcone information."

I stared at him. "What?" I said. "That doesn't make any sense."

Carmichael grimaced. "I already told you why, Murph," he said. "It's not the money, okay? This case is _weird_, and the killer is clearly some kind of psychopath—"

"No," I said. "I get _why_ you did it. I'm saying it just doesn't make any sense. Why would Marcone try to get information out of me if he already had you?"

Carmichael scratched at his chin. "It's not the first time I've done it," he admitted. "But it's the first time a case like this came up while you were working with me. I gave him the heads-up that Tommy Tomm was dead, but I told him I wasn't gonna keep him in the loop this time unless you were okay with it. That's why he tried to get you on-board." He gave me a tired, guilty look. "And I didn't call him again. I promised you that, and I didn't do it, okay?"

My stomach sank. I wasn't sure what to say to that. It was a rough betrayal to process, and I suddenly wasn't sure I wanted to bring Carmichael in on the stuff I'd learned anymore.

"It's not often a case scares the shit out of me enough to pass the buck," Carmichael told me. "But up till now, it was always an easy call to make when it came up." He shook his head. "I'm not gonna do that anymore. It's got consequences. It was easier for me to ignore that when they weren't right in front of me." He eyed me bleakly. "You want to do things the right way, I'll do it with you. If you still want to be partners, anyway."

I closed my eyes. _Ugh._ Now was not the time to be making life-altering decisions like this. I didn't have the physical strength or the mental bandwidth to make the right call. Frankly, I didn't think Carmichael had the energy for this either, but neither of us really had a choice in the matter. Time was ticking by, and I needed the fucking backup.

"...fine," I said quietly. "I don't like any of this, but at least you kept your word. That's something." I let out a hard breath. "Look, Ron… I solved the case. Well — _solved_ is a strong word. I stumbled on some answers. It goes that way sometimes."

Carmichael stared at me. "You want to fill me in?" he asked.

"Not really," I said bluntly. "But I'm gonna do it anyway." I started for my bedroom, to go search out some fresh clothing. The path took me through the living room, which definitely didn't help things. The Discovery Channel was still playing, but the skull on the couch had carefully dimmed its eyelights. It made for a weird kind of tableau, and boy did I not have time to explain. I ignored it, and headed to the bedroom to grab my clothing, thinking through what I was going to say. By the time I had my new long-sleeved shirt and jeans, I still didn't know how I was supposed to approach the subject.

I came out to find Carmichael sitting on the couch next to the skull, watching Shark Week with a dim kind of interest.

"I'm tired as hell, so I'm just gonna put it to you straight," I told him. "You can't solve this case or stop these deaths without what I know. But as soon as I tell you the truth, you're gonna think I'm crazy _and_ you're gonna be in the line of fire. Forever, Ron. You're gonna know things you can't un-know. People will want you dead if they find out."

I rubbed at my arm over my shirt. The stitches had started to itch like crazy, on top of the pain. "Someone else is about to die if I don't stop it. So we don't get to step around this. You say yes, and we both go get this guy now, tonight. You say no, you gotta ask for a partner transfer. I'm not gonna be able to work with a partner who's still in the dark."

Carmichael knitted his brow. "...I want to say no," he admitted. "A few days ago, Murph, I gotta be honest… I would've said no. I like my life the way it is." He rubbed at his face. "But I know if I do, I'm leaving you to deal alone. You eat your gun a few years from now, and I'm gonna look back on this moment and know I should've done something."

I swallowed hard. "You sure?" I asked. "You better be _really_ sure, Ron."

"I'm sure," he said. "Lay it on me. We've got shit to do, you said."

I looked toward the skull on the couch, but I decided not to bring up Bob just yet. I'd promised I wouldn't tell anyone about him, after all.

I rubbed at my forehead.

"Okay, here's the short version. Linda and Jennifer were blackmailing a… a guy who can do magic." I wasn't going to say the word _wizard_ to Carmichael with a straight face, though I knew it would hardly make a difference either way. "He's got a hidey hole at a lake house in Michigan. He's using the storms to fuel his magic, and he's really pissed off at his wife right now, so the next time one rolls in, she's gonna be body number three. I told her I wouldn't let that happen, but I've got no idea how I'm gonna pull that off just yet."

Carmichael tried. I saw him really, really try. He _wanted_ to believe me, because it would make this a solvable situation. But slowly, inevitably, I saw him come to the conclusion I'd expected all along: he thought I'd cracked under pressure.

"...Murph," he started. But he didn't continue. He didn't know what to say. The morning's argument had stuck with him. If he didn't handle my crazy just the right way, he was thinking, maybe we'd end up having a repeat.

"Ron," I said. "Those are not words I ever wanted to say to you. Believe me, _the murder weapon was black magic_ still sounds just as dumb to me. But I'm out of skepticism at this point. A giant scorpion put me in the hospital two days ago, and a priest just exorcised an honest-to-god demon in front of my face. You can either come with me and see for yourself, or you can walk out the door and pretend you never heard anything. Either way, I'm headed out soon."

The skull on the couch groaned. "Ugh. Why do you do this to me, kid?" Bob complained. "You want to take on a wizard in his own sanctum, looking like that? Do you _know_ how crazy you sound right now?"

Carmichael went pale. I let out a small sigh of relief. Bob's inability to keep his mouth shut was a small godsend at the moment.

"I'm up for any advice that might make it slightly _less _suicidal," I told the skull, switching my attention. I paused. "You think we can chat in the car? Michigan's not _that_ close. I want to make sure we get there before another storm hits, at least."

Bob was silent for a second. I felt his hesitation. He'd just revealed himself in front of a mortal — that was probably bad enough. Now I was asking him to come with me to take on a psychopathic wizard.

"...you can't let him get his hands on my anchor, kid," Bob said finally. "However bad you think this guy is now, he'd be bananas with my help. You get that?"

My heart sank. "Yeah. No. You're right. I'm sorry for asking, Bob."

The skull's eye lights flickered uncomfortably. "I'm not saying no," he said. "I _should_ say no." He paused. "Leave the skull with the nerd. If you give me permission, I can ride along with you instead."

I blinked. "What would _that_ entail, exactly?"

"Full-on possession," Bob replied. "As your helpful advisor, I gotta say, I wouldn't recommend you take me up on it. I'm a spirit of intellect. I could do a lot of bad things to your head while I'm in there."

"Taking on a wizard without knowing what I'm doing could do a lot of bad things to me too," I pointed out. I ran my fingers back through my hair with a sigh. "All right. You've got permission to ride along with me until… until tomorrow night. How's that?"

A flood of little orange lights flowed out of the skull and into the room. Carmichael's mouth dropped open. I saw him pinch himself on the arm.

The lights shifted toward me in a swirling cloud. I had only the briefest moment to wonder whether I'd made a bad decision after all before they settled in around me, tickling at my skin with a strange, electric tingle. As I breathed in, I thought I smelled a hint of ozone and… peppermint? I wasn't sure. Maybe my brain was making things up as I tried to make sense of things I wasn't supposed to experience.

The orange lights disappeared — but I felt them just beneath my skin, still moving and tickling like an electrical current. I became aware of a presence next to me, and I turned, blinking.

There was a man standing to my side. He was older than me, with deeply-carved laugh lines and little streaks of silver in his blond hair. He wore a long button-down and jeans that instantly reminded me of my father's style of dress. His eyes danced with orange light, obviously supernatural.

Uncle Bob looked… exactly the way I thought my real uncle might have looked, if I'd had one.

I reached out to touch his arm, staring. It felt solid beneath my hand.

"I'm not really standing here, kid," Bob told me. "It's just a mental illusion, to make conversation easier." His voice sounded perfectly normal now that it wasn't coming out of a skull. "Your buddy can't see me or hear me. Just letting you know, in case you wanted to look a little less crazy."

"Holy shit," I said softly.

"Holy shit," Carmichael echoed me. He had the skull in his hands now. He was searching it for speakers or wires, I was sure.

I snatched the skull from his hands. "Time to go," I said. "You can stay here in denial if you want, but I'm taking the car to Michigan either way."

Carmichael forced himself to his feet. I saw him shove down his misgivings, at least for the moment. "You really think we can take this guy on alone?" he asked. "I mean… us and your… skull?"

"First off," I said. "Don't talk about the skull. He doesn't exist, and you didn't see him. He's got some enemies out there, but he's still family. Got it?" As Carmichael nodded dazedly at me, I shook my head. "Secondly… yeah, no. We haven't got a goddamn chance." I loathed the words that were about to come out of my mouth. "That's why I'm calling Johnny Marcone."

Carmichael raised both eyebrows in my direction.

I gave him a bleak look. "Just do me a favor and don't say _I told you so_."


	17. Chapter 17

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Seventeen_

"First point of order," I said to the spirit in the back seat. "Saint Mary looked pretty crazy with the Sight. And just today, Father Forthill made a swimming pool full of holy water that actually killed a demon. What's up with this holy stuff, Bob? Is it something I can use? Is Saint Mary really gonna protect Monica from the heart-exploding stuff, or what?"

Bob made an annoyed sound. "Ugh," he said. "You just _had_ to ask about faith magic." His voice seemed to be coming from behind me, but I knew it was just a phantasm. I saw him in the mirror, stretched out across the back seat, with his shoes propped up against the window. "I don't know, kid. That stuff is squidgy. It doesn't have any hard and fast rules. You're asking a scientist the equivalent of a philosophical question here. You might as well ask me _what is art_ or _why do we exist_."

I pressed my lips together. "But it _might_ work?"

Carmichael gave me a sideways glance from the driver's seat, but he didn't say anything. I knew I sounded like I was talking to myself. I wondered if he'd started rationalizing away what he'd seen in the house before.

"No idea," Bob said. "The most I can tell you is that it probably won't _hurt_ things. Saint Mary _does_ have a pretty butch threshold, so it's not the worst idea." I had a moment of disconnect at the term _threshold_. Before I could open my mouth to ask about it, though, he answered the question. "Homestead laws, kid. Magic and spirits have less of an effect inside a home if the source hasn't been invited. Some public places have thresholds too, for… faith-y reasons. Like I said, that's not my area."

"All right," I sighed. "I don't guess there's anything else I can recommend to the Father to help matters?"

"Not with the resources you've got," Bob replied. "I don't mean to be sour grapes, kid, but man, I _really_ wish you'd inherited just a little bit of magic. You're as dry as a bone, though. There's not even a thimble of the stuff in here."

"No need to remind me, Bob," I muttered.

"You _do_ have some pretty nasty stuff going on with your memories, though," Bob said brightly. "Someone really powerful went to a lot of trouble to tamper with your head. It'd be a real challenge to pull it apart without breaking something, but I'd just love to give it a try—"

"Oof," I said. "_Please_ don't, Bob. The very last thing I need is to blow my brain up before we take this guy on."

Bob sighed. "All right, all right. I'll leave the mystery box be. I just want you to know it's there, and it's _super_ interesting."

"Bob," I said. "Don't be Pandora."

"Right. Right." The phantom in the back seat tapped his shoe against the glass. "If you change your mind, though—"

"_Focus_, Bob." Those words had become a veritable mantra. "We're going wizard-hunting. Victor summoned up a demon before. Can he do that again?"

"Probably not the same demon," Bob said. "Not as long as you're quick, anyway. Even the most powerful demon would take at least a day to reform after getting toasted in your reality. If he's got another demon's name on hand, though, that's another matter." He sighed heavily. "I'd be more worried about wards if I were you. He might or might not have figured those out by now. If he has, then just knocking on the door might be enough to turn you into barbecue."

I grimaced. "Any way around that?"

"Uhhh…" Bob hemmed. "Not normally, no. But with _you _there… maybe. You'd have to intentionally open your Third Eye, look for weak spots. This guy's not the sharpest tool, so he's probably made some dumb mistakes we can exploit. Assuming you don't go cuckoo for cocoa puffs, anyway."

"Hospital's coming up," Carmichael told me. "You want to call up Waldo, or should I do it?"

"I've got it," I said. "Put a pin in the speculation for now, Bob. I've gotta hand off your anchor."

0-0-0-0

"_Why _did I actually think you'd stay in bed," Waldo sighed softly.

He considered me with a resigned sort of expression as I leaned against the car. The clouds were gray and heavy overhead; the rain had just started to sprinkle a little, splattering against his glasses. He'd jogged out from the hospital to meet me in the parking lot.

I smiled at him in spite of myself. Just looking at him again had brought the Sight of his soul back to mind. "Because you're a hopeless optimist in the face of all proof to the contrary, I'm guessing," I told him. "Don't worry, it's cute."

Waldo glanced inside the car at Carmichael. My partner simply shrugged in reply.

"Hey," said Bob. He was suddenly standing next to me in the rain. "That's nice. What's that memory you're looking at right now?"

"Nothing," I murmured under my breath. "Butt out."

"What?" Waldo asked me, blinking.

"Nothing," I said again, louder this time. "Hey, uh. I thought I'd give you this, since you were interested in it before." I offered out Bob's skull. "I mean… I'm _lending _it to you. Only for a day or two. You promise to be really careful with it?"

Waldo knitted his brow. "That's what you came out here for?" he asked, puzzled. "I mean… er, yes. Thank you. I—" His eyes dropped to my arm, and he cut himself off. I followed his gaze, and winced. The bit of rain had plastered my long sleeve to my arm. A hint of blood was already staining the fabric.

"Karrin," he said softly. "What happened?"

Crap. I didn't have time to navigate this. It was only sprinkling right now, but I had no way of knowing whether it was going to turn into a full-on storm or not. The clouds were moving slow though, I noted, and not exactly toward Michigan. That was something.

"Angry husband," I said. It wasn't really a lie. As Waldo's eyes widened, I added: "Not, uh, _my _ex-husband. Someone else's husband. You know how ugly it can get."

Waldo frowned. "Did you see an EMT?" he asked me. "Maybe you should come in and get that looked at—"

"It's good," I said. "I accidentally disinfected it with a bunch of chlorine. I can't deal with the bureaucracy right now. I'll repack it when I get home."

Waldo considered me for a long moment. A drop of water plinked onto his nose. "...you're not going home right now, are you?" he asked me.

I sighed. "No," I admitted. "I'm not. But some stuff just needs doing, Waldo."

The M.E. contemplated that for a second. He grimaced. "You really frustrate me sometimes," he said. "I just want you to know that." He shook his head. "Please come inside, Karrin. Just for five minutes. I'll take a look myself."

I frowned at him. "You don't like working on the living, Waldo," I said.

"I _hate_ working on the living," he corrected me. "And I'm barely qualified to do it at this point. But it's something small I can do to help."

I chewed on that. I was still in a hurry… but he was probably right. The Father had done his best, but the gash in my arm was deep. The last thing I needed was to have it tear open while I was dealing with bigger stuff.

"...okay," I sighed. "Five minutes. Thanks, Waldo." I managed a small smile in his direction. "Uh… the CDs weren't bad, by the way. I kind of liked the first one."

Waldo blinked. "Oh," he said. He sounded pleased, in spite of himself. "I'm glad. They're, uh. My favorite."

I knocked lightly on the window. As Carmichael glanced up, I held up my fingers. _Five minutes,_ I mouthed. He nodded uneasily, and I headed into the hospital with Waldo, with a skull tucked under my arm.

0-0-0-0

Waldo was… _mostly_ good to his word. It definitely took more than five minutes for him to pull apart the Father's work, clean out the wound, and redo the stitches. I cursed and looked away and cried a few not-so-stoic tears in the process — but on the whole, he had a surprisingly deft sewing hand. More than once, he patted my hand and told me I was doing really well, and I felt a little bit like a kid getting my booster shots.

The injury felt a hell of a lot more secure when Waldo was done. I glanced his way, and noticed for the first time just how pale he was himself. _Maybe I should have been the one comforting him,_ I thought.

He took a few deep, steadying breaths as he pulled off his gloves, and I forced myself to harden up. "Uh, Waldo," I said. "Are _you_ okay?"

The M.E. cringed. "I will be," he mumbled. "Just a little woozy. I'm not used to actual blood pressure."

I glanced toward Bob's skull, sitting on top of the desk in the office we'd borrowed. I felt a sense of uncertainty. Waldo was definitely one of the few people I would have trusted with Bob's anchor, but I didn't like leaving him with something so dangerous without full knowledge of what it could entail.

Bob sighed from next to me. I turned to look at him. It was weird seeing him with normal human expressions on his face. "In for a penny, kid," he mumbled. "I knew this was going to get me in deep when I said yes. Just tell him what you gotta."

I gave the spirit a grateful look. I knew how much all of this bothered him. It didn't escape my notice that he'd agreed to take a bunch of risks on my behalf today.

"Waldo," I said quietly. "You've been really good to me lately. I don't want to screw that up." I turned back toward him; he was leaning heavily back in the office chair, trying to steady his breathing. Now that he'd finished stitching me up, his hands were shaking in his lap. He looked oddly fragile.

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that," Waldo admitted uncertainly.

I chewed on my lip. "I'm going to do something pretty dangerous tonight," I said. "Someone's in trouble, and I think I've got to be the one to help them. I don't want you to get a nasty surprise or somehow blame yourself if… if I don't come back."

Waldo looked up at me. Worry crossed his face. "I don't like the sound of that," he said. He hesitated. "Is there… is there anything I can do to help, Karrin?"

I grimaced. Waldo was turning out to be a painfully decent soul. I was starting to feel a little self-conscious about it. "The skull is important," I said. "I promised someone I wouldn't talk about why. But it's kind of dangerous to have. It's, uh… valuable, I think. And if the wrong person gets their hands on it, bad things could happen. I trust you enough to leave it with you. If… if you could keep an eye on it, it'd mean a lot to me. But I can't do that to you without letting you know a little bit about the risks."

Waldo frowned. He was a natural puzzle-solver. I could tell he was trying to figure out how a skull could possibly be that important. But he put the mystery on the back burner. "Is someone actively looking for it?" he asked me.

I glanced at Bob. He shook his head uncertainly, and I took that to mean he didn't _think_ so.

"Probably not," I said. "But you'd need to keep it quiet."

Waldo picked up the skull carefully. His hands were still shaking. He considered it long and hard, and I knew he was trying to think through the decision. Finally, he nodded slowly. "I'll keep it safe," he told me. "I'd really like you to come back though, Karrin."

I smiled weakly. "Yeah, me too." I had the weirdest urge to lean forward and kiss his cheek. I suppressed the instinct, deeply unnerved. _All this crazy pressure is giving me weird thoughts,_ I told myself. I pushed back to my feet.

"Karrin," Waldo said. "Would you…" He hesitated. "Would you mind calling me when you get back home? I'd just feel better knowing you're okay."

Bob fixed Waldo with a strange expression. I wondered if the spirit could feel something about the M.E. through his anchor.

"Yeah," I said. "I'll do that. Hey, uh. Don't worry if you can't get hold of me in the meantime. My phone's kaput." I gave him a wry smile. "And take good care of Bob for me, huh?"

"Oh, don't worry about that," Waldo said softly. "I take the best care of dead people, Karrin."

0-0-0-0

"Just curious, Bob," I said, as I headed out of the hospital. "Why'd you want me to leave you with Waldo?"

Bob shrugged. "It's not like I've met tons of your friends," he said. "But I guess I've had worse masters." He sounded a little thoughtful, though, and I wondered if he'd softened some on the medical examiner.

Carmichael was starting to look wired and impatient by the time I got back to the car. I slid into the passenger seat and gave him a nod. "Sorry for the detour," I said. I followed it up with a grimace. "Guess it's time I made a phone call, huh?"

Carmichael hesitated. "I thought we were going straight-arrow," he said. "Why Marcone, Murph?"

I sighed. "I hate basically everything about this," I admitted. "But there's no way we're cutting through the bureaucracy in time to get proper backup. I'm as certain as I can be that Victor's guilty, and the lake house is isolated enough that I'm hoping there's no innocent bystanders to worry about." I set my jaw. "Marcone and a few of his people think I'm more in-the-know about this stuff than they are. They might not even be wrong. That means I've got half a chance of keeping them in line, since they have to rely on me to keep them from blowing themselves up."

"All good reasons," Carmichael grunted. "But you were dead set before. What _really_ changed your mind?"

I closed my eyes. "I promised Monica I wouldn't let her die," I admitted quietly. "I don't know if I can live with myself if I break that promise." My stomach churned. "This is a one-time thing, Ron. I can't make this a habit. And you can't _let _me make it a habit. Understood?"

Carmichael was quiet for a moment. Finally, he nodded. "Murph," he said. "Don't beat yourself up. You got a head for what's right. I don't think you got this one wrong."

I pressed my face into my hand. "I sure fucking hope not," I whispered.

"I gotta admit, I don't understand all this moralizing," Bob said. He was in the back seat again, leaning between our seats. "Philosophy never was my strong point, though."

"I'll get you a crash course in human ethics later," I told him. I took a deep breath, and forced myself to pull out Monica's phone.

0-0-0-0

The woman that answered the phone at the number Marcone had given me was _not_ in a peppy mood.

"I'm afraid I don't know who you're talking about," she replied snappishly, when I asked about Marcone. "You must have the wrong number."

"Fine," I said. "Give me Mister Hendricks then. You can tell him Detective Murphy is calling for him, and she knows who's trying to kill his boss. If he still tells you to screw off, I'll go handle it alone."

For a second, I thought she was going to hang up on me. But she brooded over the line. "...I'll go and see if we have anyone here by that name," she said stiffly.

She put me on hold. Elevator music started playing over the line.

"Marcone's hiding out somewhere for sure," Carmichael observed from the driver's seat. "I doubt many people know how to reach him at this point."

"Yeah," I said. "That's why I'm talking to the hired help. Marcone might be incommunicado, but I bet his bodyguard's still interested in some proactive assassination-prevention."

The muzak on the phone gave out before he could respond to that. "This is Hendricks," said a flat voice on the other end.

I pulled the phone back toward my ear. "Great," I said. "I'm going to try and stop a crazy wizard from killing anyone else. You can come with, but if you do, you follow my lead and you follow my rules. You gotta decide now, because I'm headed out to kick his ass as we speak."

"...hm," Hendricks said. It was a thoughtful sound, at least. "Warrant?" he asked curiously.

"If I had a warrant," I said, "I wouldn't be calling _you_." I didn't figure beating around the bush would do either of us any good.

"Why _are_ you calling?" Hendricks asked bluntly.

"Because there's a woman out there currently praying her heart doesn't explode out of her chest at any second," I told him. "And this asshole is probably gonna wipe the floor with me if I show up without more help." I paused. "You in or not?"

I heard a soft tapping sound on the other end of the line. Hendricks was drumming his fingers against something as he thought. "All right," he said finally. "Where should I meet you?"


	18. Chapter 18

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Eighteen_

We met Hendricks at a parking lot just outside an IHOP. It wasn't classy, but it was an easy landmark on our way out of town. The red-headed bodyguard was driving a sturdy black SUV; the glass in the windows looked suspiciously bulletproof.

"Just you?" I asked. I didn't mean to sound disappointed, exactly, but I'd hoped that calling in the mob would get me at least a _little_ more firepower.

"Found a traitor," Hendricks told me, as he popped open the back of the SUV and started rummaging. "I trust me, at this point. Probably you." He gave Carmichael a brief fish-eye. "..._maybe_ him."

Carmichael grunted. "I never asked for trust," he said. "It's not like we're buddies."

Hendricks tossed me a bulletproof vest. It was a little big for me, but it was better than nothing. I peeled off my jacket and pulled it on. The one he handed to Carmichael sat a little better on my partner, even with his impressive beer belly.

"There's a GPS in the cop car," I said. "It's better if we don't take it across state lines, so it looks like we're riding with you. I'll get you the address."

I caught sight of a few impressive-looking weapons under a blanket in the back of the SUV. I suspected they weren't anywhere near legal. I was already deeply uncomfortable with this whole idea, but it was far too late to change my mind. I heard a rumble of thunder overhead, so I headed for the front seat of the car.

"Plan?" Hendricks asked me, as he buckled into the driver's seat.

_Uh._ I tried to shoot Bob a mental plea.

"I still think you're up the river without a paddle," the spirit told me. "But if you manage to get past any wards and sneak up on the guy before he gets off a spell, you _might_ have a fighting chance. Just so you know, if he manages to talk before he dies, he's probably getting off a death curse and taking someone with him. He could send it after anyone, technically. You, the big guy over there, maybe even his wife."

I was starting to feel a little bit like Han Solo trying to navigate an asteroid field. Maybe I'd been better off not knowing the odds.

"We need to catch him flat-footed," I told Hendricks. "Park a ways out from the lake house. We'll head up on foot, I'll do some checking around to make sure we don't trigger any nasty surprises. We really need to catch him before he gets any spells off. Preferably before he talks at all."

"Backup plan?" Hendricks asked.

I grimaced. "I wish I had one. This guy is bad news, and he's got me on a time limit."

Hendricks pulled out of the parking lot. He looked thoughtful. "Could just burn the place down," he said.

I cringed. Bob made a sound like a buzzer behind me. "Nope, wrong!" he said cheerfully. "If there's a Way nearby, he might just duck into the Nevernever and disappear. You'd _never-_never catch him that way."

"Nevernever?" I whispered, as quietly as I could. Hendricks shot me a sideways glance.

"The Other Side," Bob replied. "Astral Plane, Arcadia, so on and so forth. It's where stuff like faeries and demons come from. But you can't get in just anywhere, and you need someone to open the way." He snorted to himself. "Open the way. Open the Way. Hah! Sometimes I crack myself up without even trying."

I cleared my throat. "He might have a kind of… reality back door," I told Hendricks. "If we try to flush him out without eyes on him, he could just rabbit where we can't follow."

Hendricks looked annoyed at that. "Magic," he muttered. "Inconvenient."

I saw Carmichael watching Hendricks from the back seat. He seemed surprised to hear the mobster talking so calmly about the supernatural. I felt a tiny bit better about having Hendricks with us. At least that meant I was two to one against my partner's tendency toward skepticism.

"Very inconvenient," I said. "If we don't take him out quick, we get to find out whether he's got Evocation. That's more movie magic stuff — blast and boom." That was one of the few basics I'd already gotten through with Bob so far. "At that point, it's duck and cover and hope he doesn't get too creative."

"_Take him out_," Hendricks repeated. He glanced toward me. "Shoot to kill?"

I went quiet at that. I knew how dangerous it would be for Victor to get a chance to fight back. Taking him down before he could he could speak was the safest course of action… not just for us, but for Monica. It was the latter point that decided me, in spite of my misgivings. "Don't try for anything fancy," I said. "Shoot center mass — better chance to hit him." I paused, and swallowed hard. "I won't cry if he dies. But if there _are _people there with him, it's police procedure for them. Only appropriate, reciprocal force."

Hendricks didn't seem a fan of that, but he nodded anyway. "We wear masks, then," he said. "No identification."

I scowled, but I didn't argue. I might not have liked the idea of using tricks of the criminal trade… but we didn't have a warrant. That meant this _was _criminal.

"Better and better," Carmichael observed bleakly.

I couldn't contradict him.

0-0-0-0

We beat the storm by a few minutes — just enough to park the SUV down the road and out of sight of the lake house. Hendricks fished out some painfully stereotypical ski masks and gloves for us, and a very illegal, fully automatic gun for himself.

"Do you guys just keep these SUVs loaded up and ready to go for all your criminal needs?" Carmichael asked. "Is this just like a typical Tuesday run?"

Hendricks clicked off the safety on the gun. "Are you complaining that I'm properly prepared?" he asked.

I shook my head at Carmichael. There was no point in antagonizing the help. "No one's complaining," I said. "For tonight, we have each other's backs, we do this as right as we can. Tomorrow, we can go back to business as usual."

Hendricks offered us each a pistol. "No serials," he said. "No history."

I grimaced, but I took the gun. The odds of us getting out of this without me having to shoot something were pretty fucking slim. It wasn't a good time to be using my legally-registered backup gun.

Carmichael was starting to look rattled. I didn't blame him. Somehow we'd gone from _no more Marcone_ straight to _murder-date with the mob._ It was feeling like a bumpy transition.

Lightning cracked in the distance behind us. I had a brief vision of Monica, sitting inside Saint Mary, praying not to die. I turned to start hiking my way up the dirt road. After sitting still for so long, my injuries had settled into an awful soreness. I carefully stretched my muscles as I went, trying to work out the kinks.

"Can you think of _any_ way to bring this guy in normally?" I asked Bob quietly. I was a good fifteen feet ahead of the other two already, but I kept my voice low anyway.

Bob made a strange sight in my mind's eye, walking next to me out in the open without a mask or a vest. I noticed that the spotty rain didn't wet his hair or dribble down his face. "I don't know why it upsets you so much, kid," he said casually. "The Wardens are gonna come for him eventually. They're big on execution, and not in the humane way. The way I see it, you're just speeding up the process so he doesn't cause more damage in the meantime."

I thought on that darkly. It made a certain amount of sense. It still didn't make me feel any better. "It's a really different matter to be the one doing it," I said finally. "I'm a detective, Bob, not an executioner. I'm supposed to drag people back for a fair trial, let society make the final call."

Bob chuckled, entirely too calm for my tastes. "Well… society doesn't believe he did anything," he said. "And kid, let's be honest — what would you do with him if you _did _catch him alive? Hide him in your basement? I'm just saying, basic logic." He waved a hand. "If it upsets you so much, let the big, burly guy kill him."

I scowled. "That's a cop-out," I said.

Bob snickered. "Cop-out," he said. "Good one."

"This is _so_ not the right time for puns," I muttered crossly.

"Kid," said Bob. "There is no such thing as a _wrong_ time for puns." He let out a low whistle, though, as the lake house came into view below us.

"_Whew_," said the spirit. "That's a spiritual fixer-upper if I ever saw one. This guy's been leaking black magic like a sieve." He squinted. "Oh, right. I forget you've only got the five senses normally. Probably for the best. Even I'm feeling a little wigged out looking at it."

I tried to calm down my roiling stomach to focus on the present. I knew I still wasn't comfortable shooting to kill. That was a really big problem, but I didn't have time to come to grips with it. The lake house was right there — smaller than I'd anticipated, but much more expensive-looking, with a lot of glass and polished wood. All the curtains had been drawn, but that didn't mean someone wasn't watching through them. In that respect, the thick clouds overhead were a good thing; the darkness would mask our approach.

"Back door?" Hendricks asked me quietly, as the other two caught up with me.

I nodded, my chest tightening. "Stay back and let me check it first."

The lake house was built on two levels; I headed toward the deck on the second level, where an inconspicuous door led inside. I paused a few feet away.

"Keep it narrow," Bob advised me. "Once you take off the blinders, you'll be Seeing more than I do. I don't think you want to take in the whole view here."

I took in a deep breath, and tried to steady my nerves. I knew I wasn't in the right frame of mind to be intentionally prying open my Third Eye. My brain still felt barely recovered from my low point this morning. I wasn't sure I wanted to be here, doing what I was doing, spitting in the face of almost everything I believed. But life and the weather weren't going to run on my timetable.

All I knew was that the Father was going to have his work cut out for him the next time I saw him.

I reached for the aching point in my forehead that I'd come to associate mainly with fear and madness and misery… and forced it open one more time.

The first thing I became aware of was the deep, suffocating air of hunger.

It was the kind of blind, angry hunger that consumed everything else. _I deserve,_ said that hunger. _I want, I need, why shouldn't I have._ Victor's insatiable lust had permeated the whole place. I felt it on my skin, slick and dirty. I had to resist the urge to try and wipe it off me.

I tried to keep my focus on the door, but I saw shadows flickering at the edges of my vision, skittering along the walls of the lake house. "Bob," I whispered. "Are those real? Are they alive?"

"Huh?" Bob said. "I can't See what you're Seeing, kid. Describe it."

"There's… _things_… crawling all over the house," I said. "Shadow creatures."

"Oh," said Bob. "Yeah, I can see those too. They're just low-level carrion feeders. They're not intelligent or anything, they're just attracted to the all the leaky magic around here. I'm thinking his rituals aren't exactly what you'd call _energy-efficient._"

"Can they hurt me?" I asked.

Bob shrugged. "Maybe in the long-term," he said. "If you decided to move in and live here. I wouldn't worry about 'em right now, though."

I nodded, and refocused my awareness on the door. There _was_ something about it — a hiss and crackle of phantom flames, criss-crossing the outside.

"Look but don't touch, grasshopper," Bob told me, as I described the Sight to him. "Sounds like our barbecue scenario to me. You're going to have to get your head around the wards, kind of chew on them with your brain. You're looking for what triggers them."

I wanted to ask him what the hell he meant by _chew with your brain_, but I understood it intuitively as I looked harder. I had to narrow my consciousness — send it a little deeper into the magic. It wasn't pleasant. Victor's magic was angry, oil slick, and even just a little bit misogynistic; he'd learned to draw power from making women fear and obey him. I didn't _want_ to understand that too well.

Nevertheless, I dove in deeper, feeling at those lines of fire. They were barely-restrained power, waiting… searching out some particular moment.

"They're all over the house," I said softly. "I think they're tuned to go off when a human being touches the place. But there's a bypass when the door is unlocked. To let in guests he actually wants, I'm guessing."

Bob made a thoughtful sound. "Huh," he said. "Just humans? No protection against spirits?"

I frowned. "I'm not sure what that would look like," I said. "But… I don't think so?"

Bob winced. "Can't do any better than that?" he asked me.

"I'm really new at this, Bob," I told him. "But as far as I can tell, he's mostly worried about people."

Bob sighed. "Ah, well," he muttered. "Worst case scenario, I get a little zapped. I don't think Mister Exploding-Heart novice is good enough to take me down in one go." He stretched his arms a bit. "Permission to break and enter, boss lady?"

I blinked. "You can do that?" I asked.

"Hah," Bob said. "Not normally. But if this place ever had a threshold, it's been long-since shredded. Habitual demon-summoning and leaky black magic really don't do your metaphysical defenses any favors."

I nodded slowly. "Okay. Do, uh. Whatever you're thinking of doing."

The phantasm next to me disappeared. I felt the electrical tingle underneath my skin quicken and surge forward. It felt especially weird since I'd nearly forgotten it was there; Bob's presence had become a kind of accepted background noise in my brain. Slowly, those orange-gold motes leaked away from me, curling toward the door and flooding through the lock. I stared at the spirit with the Sight, a little bit flabbergasted by the impression he left upon me.

He was… well, _powerful_. I hadn't realized just how powerful until this very moment. I had the sense of an endless array of knowledge packed away within him — enough to fill thousands of libraries. Nor was it purely static; there were new books being written every second, existing books being revised and adapted, as Bob hungrily pulled in new thoughtforms and ideas from the metaphysical world in which he lived. There were whole different dimensions to him, whole different senses, that I knew I could spend lifetimes just trying to understand.

For the first time, I was also painfully struck by the fact that Bob's consciousness _wasn't_ human. It was a sparkling web of information, held together by cold, rational decision-making that reminded me more of a computer than a human being. But that cold consciousness didn't quite track with the being I'd been interacting with until now. Just because I was looking for it, I saw the little mote of personality glimmering within him; an atom of irrational, artificial emotion, built in imitation of all the humans he'd interacted with.

Bob was building himself a personality. I wasn't even sure he knew he was doing it. It wasn't a perfect parallel to the sort of thing a human being would have, but that didn't make it any less real.

Seeing him next to the bracelet I still wore also made me keenly aware of their similarities. The dark, dull magical circuits of my mother's bracelet had been modeled after Bob, I realized.

The flood of orange lights whispered back toward me. I breathed in, and the electric tingle slid back down my spine. Uncle Bob appeared next to me again; this time, the unearthly glow in his eyes held more of my attention.

"Hey, that was fun," Bob said. "I feel kind of like James Bond. You think you could imagine me up a suit?"

I blinked a few times. I was having trouble meshing the image in front of me with the very inhuman thing I'd just Seen.

Bob snapped his fingers in front of my face. "Kid?" he said. "Door's unlocked. Ritual's started. You're gonna want to stop him before he finishes, I'm guessing?"

I closed my eyes. Again, it didn't help. I really needed to excise that impulse. "Sorry," I said. "I Saw… _you_."

"Ooh," Bob said. "Didn't think of that. Well, that's embarrassing. Kind of like being caught without your spiritual clothes on, isn't it? Hope it wasn't too unflattering."

"No," I said slowly. "Just… _really_ different." I shook my head. "I've gotta turn this thing off. Give me a second."

I forced myself to clear my mind. It really wasn't easy this time. I had Victor's gross magic all over me, and I was sinking into the really cold, clear understanding that I'd been interacting with things that truly weren't human at all. If I had kept looking at Bianca that night — if I'd really known what I was doing back then — would I have Seen something similar underneath her skin?

A crack of thunder overhead dragged me out of my drifting thoughts. I shuddered instinctively at the power it contained. Somehow, I managed to pull my Third Eye closed again.

The world went dark and still again. I had to blink a few times to adjust myself to the dullness of reality, seen only through normal human eyesight.

I reached out hesitantly for the door. I flinched as my hand touched the handle… but nothing happened.

I turned to head back up toward the other two. Hendricks was looking at me with a carefully guarded expression. I wondered if he'd caught sight of Bob's spirit form for a moment. Maybe, I thought, he'd mistake it for magic. There were worse things than letting Marcone and his people think I was a spellcaster.

"We're good to go in," I said. "He's started up a ritual. We can't let it finish."


	19. Chapter 19

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Nineteen_

I've got to say, the last thing I was expecting was to feel like I'd walked onto a porno film set.

The kitchen we slipped into was dark and empty, but music echoed from just outside it — the kind of dark, breathy music I imagined teenage goths screwed to. I shook my head, and clutched my borrowed pistol more tightly. The momentary humor wasn't quite enough to distract me from the fact that I'd shown up to shoot a man.

I cleared the kitchen and signaled the other two to follow. Just outside, on a platform overlooking the rest of the lake house, I saw Victor Sells standing before a makeshift altar inside a chalk circle. He had a kind of aesthetic class to him, with his dark hair, his sharp face, and his tailored clothing. He was wearing a sleek leather jacket indoors for some reason, which I didn't wonder too hard at — Victor had already shown himself to be the sort that cared way too much about appearances.

He had a white rabbit tied up in front of him on the altar, its legs bound with red cord. Two candles, black and white, burned on opposite sides of the animal. Violet magic flickered around the circle, underlighting his face. Victor held a vial of some dark liquid in his hand; he was currently dribbling some of it onto the rabbit's head, muttering in a language I didn't recognize.

"Ancient Egyptian," Bob told me, reading my uncertainty. "_Bad _ancient Egyptian. His pronunciation is awful."

A soft moan drew my attention to the side, where another circle had been set up, maybe fifteen feet across. I blinked, and flushed in spite of myself. A man and woman were inside the circle, fully naked and doing exactly the sorts of things that would make Father Forthill cross himself if he'd been there. It was hard to see their faces, but given the heads-up, I was still able to recognize them from court photos. Greg and Helen Beckitt had once done their utmost to see Johnny Marcone behind bars for the death of their child, but the mobster had ultimately gotten off without a conviction. Once, I'd pitied them — but in that moment, any sympathy I'd once had for them dried up completely. In their pursuit of vengeance, they'd already aided a drug ring and helped facilitate at least three murders. Now, they were about to help Victor murder his wife and further traumatize his kids.

Then again, I had a gun aimed at his back. I could stop him. Right now.

Victor raised what looked like a sharpened silver spoon. The rabbit squirmed.

"Kid," Bob told me. "I don't mean to rush you, but if you're gonna stop him, now is literally your last chance."

I clenched my teeth. I squeezed the trigger. It felt like someone else's hand on the gun, but I knew it was mine.

The pistol kicked in my hand. Victor staggered forward, dropping the spoon and choking on his incantation.

I emptied the clip, from sheer muscle memory. The last bullet felt like mine. I got my head around it, told myself I'd just murdered a man, as Victor dropped to the floor.

A sickening rush of power dispersed around him; violet light leaked out of the circle, licking along every available surface, curling along my body. I knew I should have kept a hold on the situation, started corralling the Beckitts, but my body didn't seem to be working right. I dropped my gun, breathing hard. _Don't throw up,_ I thought dimly. _Don't throw up, that's a bad idea, you can't possibly clean it up well enough._

Hendricks stepped past me, fully in-control. He pointed his gun at the Beckitts, started growling at them in an intimidating tone. They weren't in a position to resist him — they were as vulnerable as it gets.

Carmichael closed his hand on my arm. I forced in a ragged breath.

"You should've let the mobster do it," he muttered at me. I heard the tension in his voice. He was looking around at the grotesque ritual setup, glancing down at the violet light that still played along his own gloved hands.

"Only thing more cowardly than shooting a guy in the back is asking someone else to do it for you," I said hoarsely.

"Kid," Bob said suddenly. I heard an urgent tone in his voice. "He's not dead, kid."

I heard a soft muttering from the place where Victor had collapsed in a heap. "..._Kalshazzak_," I heard him hiss, beneath the pounding music.

The shadows pooled, as they had done before — less certain, this time, as though they were struggling to hold together. I saw the demon take shape for just a moment, snarling — before it fell apart once again, into its component shadows.

Those shadows didn't disappear, though. They hissed and coalesced into a dark cloud… which flung itself toward Greg Beckitt.

"Uh oh," said Bob. I didn't like the sound of that.

I scrambled for my gun. I knew I needed to prioritize targets, but I wasn't sure which one was more pressing in the moment.

Victor snarled something in Egyptian; Carmichael grabbed me and shoved us both to the floor, as a white-hot plume of flame surged toward us.

An animalistic hiss tore across the room, as Greg Beckitt threw himself at Hendricks, eyes blazing that uncanny electric blue. Hendricks calmly squeezed off a few bullets in his direction — but while they punched what should have been decidedly fatal holes in the man, he barely seemed to notice. Greg Beckitt tackled Hendricks, tearing his gun away from him and reaching for his neck with bare hands.

Carmichael and I rolled away, just as Victor yelled out again, his voice high-pitched with hysteria. I ducked behind the wall of the kitchen, breathing hard. Oh god. Oh god, we'd needed the element of surprise, and we'd blown it. We were up the creek without a paddle, just like Bob had said.

"Give me your gun," I rasped at Carmichael, who'd settled behind the other side of the doorway. I pulled out the sports bottle and rolled it quickly across toward him. "You need to get to Beckitt and dunk him in this stuff. Got it?"

Normally, Carmichael would have been full of smart-aleck questions. But surrounded by insanity, when every second counted, he took me at my word. He snatched up the bottle and skidded the gun my way instead. We nodded at each other quickly, mentally counting down.

I ducked around the corner, raising the gun. I'd intended to cover Carmichael's charge, but instead, I found I was only able to manage a single haywire shot before another blast of fire came for my face. I leapt back, and saw that Carmichael had been forced to do the same.

"Shit," I breathed. "This isn't working. I can't give magical cover with a fucking gun." Another crazy thought rose to mind. "Bob," I said. "Can you work that bracelet?"

Bob was leaning against the wall next to me, oddly nonchalant for someone in the middle of a literal firefight. "I'm not a wizard, kid," he said. "Heck, I don't even really have magic. I'm kind of _made_ of some of the same fundamental stuff, but—"

I raised my wrist, shoving the bracelet into his face, even though some part of me knew he wasn't really there. "Bob!" I said. "Can you, or not?"

Bob blinked. He squinted at the bracelet. "Oh," he said, surprised. "You know what, I… I bet I could. It's mostly air magic. It's even kind of my style." He paused uncertainly. "Won't work for long, though," he said. "That thing's like a Christmas light, and I've got a lot of voltage going, if you know what I mean. It's gonna overheat quick."

"Good enough for me!" I told him.

I turned the corner again, holding the bracelet out in front of me. I felt Bob mentally scrambling to apply himself; the electrical tingle underneath my skin surged toward my wrist, wrapping around the silver bracelet there. This time, as Victor's fire spat toward me, I held my ground and continued toward him, mentally praying that Bob had a handle on things.

The bracelet crackled. It wasn't a healthy sort of sound. Electricity arced along its Celtic weave. The skin of my wrist hissed and burned; I smelled it in the air, but for some reason the pain didn't register. I saw the air in front of me _harden_ against the fire like a shield, angling it upward toward the roof. Glass shattered. I heard Carmichael sprinting past me for Hendricks and the Beckitts. Gunshots popped from that direction, but I didn't dare to turn and watch.

Victor's eyes widened as he realized too late that I wasn't changing course. I slammed into him, jamming my knee somewhere guaranteed to be very uncomfortable. As he doubled over in pain, I hit him with a solid punch to the throat for good measure, choking out anymore bad Egyptian spells.

Bob cackled next to me. "_Sedjet_ is just a noun, you moron!" he laughed. "_Neser_ is the verb!"

I made a mental note to help Bob with his trash talking skills later.

Victor didn't hear the spirit, obviously. As the wizard staggered back from me, I saw that the bullets that had been meant for his back were scattered across the floor. Somehow, his leather jacket had stopped them.

I raised my gun toward him. I didn't hesitate this time — he'd just come within inches of charbroiling me, and though the bracelet had cooled, I could see where the metal had warped against my skin. I still couldn't feel the pain for some reason, but I knew it was going to be awful when I did. I couldn't afford to moralize.

My first shot slammed into the jacket again. It wasn't a clean shot; I was shooting with my left hand, given that a good portion of my right was deeply out of commision. The bullet hissed against some kind of barrier on the leather, and I saw Egyptian runes flare with a fiery light, before it tumbled to the ground. I raised my shaking aim, cursing, but the next bullet just skimmed his ear, taking a good chunk of the cartilage with it.

Another series of bangs sounded through the air. I felt something slam into my leg. Again, no pain registered… but the bullet must have compromised something important, because I felt my leg buckle and I soon hit my knees.

I crawled backward quickly, glancing around for the source of the shot. My eyes fell on Helen Beckitt, standing naked next to a table. In the panic of her husband's possession, the other two had lost track of her; she'd grabbed a gun from god-knew-where, and shot at me from across the room. Her aim was terrible — but even a novice can hit a target if they shoot enough bullets.

The gun clicked a few times in her hands, and she threw it away with a grimace. Her intervention had been enough, though — I heard Victor gasp out a single word from the floor. I cringed, fully aware that I was nowhere near cover.

But no fire came.

Instead, I saw a dark, shimmering veil hiss into being behind him. The wizard staggered to his feet and snatched something up from the ground — the vial, I realized. The vial that probably held Monica's blood.

I forced myself to my feet. It made me lightheaded, and my leg wasn't right, but I found I was able to move anyway.

"Don't do it, kid," Bob said quickly. "You don't want to go where he's going—"

"I do," I gritted out. "I have to. You can stay, Bob. You've done enough."

Victor threw himself through the flickering veil of power. And I jumped in after him.


	20. Chapter 20

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Twenty_

It was cold.

Very, very cold.

I found myself staggering through snow up to my knees, bracing myself against a howling wind. Grey clouds completely covered the sun, drowning it out to a dim, filtered light — but I still managed to make out Victor's dark form stumbling a few feet in front of me. I clenched my teeth and threw myself toward him, abandoning all pretense of precision or efficiency.

My arms closed around his neck from behind. I tried closing my legs around him too, but my left leg wasn't working. I clawed at his arm, digging the edges of my chewed-down nails into his skin as I reached for the vial of blood.

Victor clearly hadn't expected me to follow him. He gasped and stumbled, tearing at my arms. I realized he was too strong for me to handle in a straightforward manner — so I slapped his bloody, half blown-off ear with my palm. He screamed and dropped to his knees; the vial went tumbling into the snow.

I dropped off his back and fumbled after it. I slammed it into a tall, jagged splinter of ice next to me. The vial shattered in my hand, shards digging into my palm.

Victor's heel caught me just underneath the chin. I saw a burst of stars — but again, I felt no pain. I blinked up at the stormy sky, disoriented and flat on my back.

The wizard tore the ski mask from my face. He laughed, somewhere between crazy and furious, his voice mixing with the howling wind.

"Stupid bitch!" he said. "Look at you! This is what happens when you try to fight what you can't understand!"

I coughed on blood. A few of my teeth had come loose when he'd kicked me in the jaw. _I got Monica's blood_, I thought dimly. It wasn't everything. Victor was still alive. He might well still make it out of this place, wherever we were, and track her down again somehow. But just for tonight, I'd won.

"Three for three," I choked out at him, grinning madly. "Tic-tac-toe. I win."

"You _die,_" Victor growled out at me. He reached down to haul me up by the collar.

A crackle of electricity surged down his arm. He let me go with a harsh swear.

"What a loser," Bob sighed next to me. "Seriously, kid? I can't help but feel like we could've done better on this one."

I frowned distantly. "Bob," I mumbled. "I told you to stay behind." The words were mostly lost on the wind, but I knew Bob had heard them.

Victor narrowed his eyes at me. He spat on the ground. "Whatever you are," he said. "You're done. I'm going to watch you bleed out, and _then_ I'm going to leave you here for whatever wants to gnaw on your bones."

"Don't worry about him, kid," Bob said quietly. He settled down next to me. The cold ebbed away from my limbs, replaced with a pleasant, tingling warmth. "He's out of juice. That's why he ran in the first place. I don't think he's making it out of here alive."

"Are you doing that?" I asked dimly.

Bob's ghostly hand settled against my head. "Yeah," he said tremulously. "Pain and cold are just electrical impulses. I've blocked 'em both. Normally, it'd be dangerous to do that, but…" He trailed off, and I thought I heard a hitch in his voice.

"...but I'm dying," I whispered.

Bob didn't respond to that one.

It was a terrifying realization. I hadn't expected it to be. It seeped into me slowly, chilling me in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.

I closed my eyes. If I had died in an instant, facing down any of the things I'd tried to fight in the last few days, I knew it would have been a different matter. But lying here in the snow, bleeding out slowly — knowing I was probably far past the point of no return already — was a different matter entirely.

I had to watch it come for me. I had to think about what it meant. The fact that, very soon, I simply wouldn't _be_.

Death was coming for me, and I couldn't do anything to stop it.

"Kid?" Bob asked. He sounded scared. "Hey, talk to me, would you?"

I blinked quickly. Tears had frozen on my eyelashes, weighing them down.

Victor smiled triumphantly at me. There was a pleasure in his eyes. Most normal people can't understand that pleasure — they don't have the capacity to understand it, don't want to believe that other people could feel it at all. But there are human beings in this world that _enjoy_ suffering, and they don't feel the need to apologize for it.

Victor Sells enjoyed watching me bleed out. That was the kind of man he was.

I decided to take Bob's advice and ignore him. If I only had so much time left, I knew who I'd rather spend it on.

"Hey, Uncle Bob," I said hoarsely. "...what do you get when you cross a snowman and a vampire?"

Bob's golden eyes were fixed upon me with a painful clarity. I saw the helplessness in his posture. "I don't… I don't know, kid," he said.

"_Frostbite_." I shot him a bloody smile.

Bob didn't laugh. But I saw his lips turn ever-so-slightly upward. "I'm gonna miss you, kid," he whispered.

I closed my eyes. "I'm gonna miss you too," I rasped. "But… but thanks for being here. I mean it. I'm glad I'm with you."

The wind's howl picked up. I let myself breathe out slowly. I wasn't cold. I wasn't in pain. There were worse ways to go for sure. I tried so hard to claw back my detachment, to reaffirm my deathwish. I hadn't done so bad for myself, had I? In the end, I'd even won the game.

Bob's helpless misery was catching. I couldn't get away from it. I found myself wanting to tell him it was all going to be all right, even though I knew it wasn't.

"Dear me," said a woman's voice, cutting across the wind with a cold, cruel clarity. "What _have_ we here?"

I slitted my eyes open again.

The howling wasn't just the wind. I saw great, large shadows skulking around us in the snow — hounds with glittering red eyes that looked just a little bit too human. Between them stood a tall, lithe woman, her skin as white as the snow that surrounded her. Her cheekbones were too high, though, and her eyes were a molten gold, slitted like a cat's would be. Her gown was far too thin for the weather, and it glittered with a strange opalescent color. Her ears filed back to gentle points against her head; fiery red curls tumbled just past her hips. I stared at her, unable to speak.

I knew that crimson hair. I had seen it braided around my wrists, binding my hands.

Bob had frozen next to me. He didn't say anything, but I knew somehow that he was very afraid.

Victor turned to eye the woman warily. I saw the lust in his eyes, though. There was something unearthly and enchanting about her. And more — a dark undercurrent to her presence that spoke of old power.

The wizard bowed toward her. "What an honor it is to meet you," he said. "I had no idea I had entered the domain of such a lovely queen."

The woman's eyes glittered. "Oh," she said. "How pleasant. I appreciate a man who errs on the side of politeness. I am not the queen of this realm, mortal. But I do serve Her with distinction." She slid toward him, unfettered by the snow. She traced one long, wicked fingernail down his cheek. "I feel blood on you," she declared. "And power. But it was not _your_ blood that drew my hounds."

Her eyes flickered toward me. I saw her pupils dilate in surprised recognition.

Victor didn't seem to notice. He was utterly intoxicated. "Yes," he said. "Blood and power both. I am lost, my lady, but I would be only too pleased to serve you and to place both at your disposal, if you would only grant me your favor."

The woman's eyes turned back toward him. She smiled suddenly, cruel and pleased. "Oh," she said. "_Oh._ What a delicious offer." She leaned in toward him, pulling his chin up toward hers with one finger. "I accept."

She pressed her blood red lips to his. Victor moaned in delight, reaching greedily out to pull her closer.

A moment later, he screamed and stumbled back. It sounded wrong, though — and I only realized why as I saw the blood that trickled from his mouth.

The redheaded woman had bitten out his tongue.

She spat his tongue from her mouth, laughing as the blood trickled down her lips. It was a pleasant laugh that tinkled like the peal of bells. "Heel, my hound," she commanded him. "Or I shall next take something you will miss far more."

Victor whimpered, falling to his knees. The hounds growled and snapped at him, as though playing along with their mistress' game.

She turned back toward me, with an interest far too keen to be coincidence. "And _how_ does a mortal woman end up dying in Winter, so far from home?" she asked.

I was too weary to sit up. I shook my head minutely and closed my eyes again. I was warm, and very, very tired.

A cool hand touched my forehead. I felt my pulse slacken. My heartbeat slowed. The woman lifted me easily to a sitting position, with a strength that belied her frame.

"You needn't die," she whispered in my ear. "I can save you yet, my dear."

The words hit me in the gut. I felt an instant reaction, a desperate affirmation. The words _yes, yes, I want to live_ stuck in my throat halfway up. I looked over at Victor, gagging up blood and clutching at his mouth.

There were worse things than death. _That_, I knew far too well.

"I don't want… _that _kind of saving," I mumbled.

Bob was staring at her as though she were a shark, come to eat us both. He swallowed hard. "Whatever you do, kid," he said. "Don't talk to me out loud. She's been around the block. She'll know what's going on in a heartbeat."

I bit back my instinctive question, but he answered it anyway. "She's a faerie. An old, mean one. Mortals call her the Leanansidhe. If she figures out I'm here, her and her queen will tear me to shreds."

A new and unexpected panic hit me at that. I'd been scared of my own death… but the idea of Bob dying was _terrifying_. For a second, I couldn't bring myself to speak at all, afraid that I might somehow give him away.

The Leanansidhe smiled, showing off her very white, faintly pointed teeth. Blood still colored her incisors where she'd bitten off Victor's tongue. "Oh, my darling," she cooed soothingly. "I wouldn't do that to you. Arrogant men are easy to find. But strong and clever women…" She sighed, deeply pleased. "What it must have taken, for you to hunt down a wizard with no power of your own! No… there are _much_ better places for you than among the dogs."

I shivered, even though I couldn't feel the cold. If I agreed to serve this creature, this _thing_, I doubted she'd be sending me out to get her morning lattes at Starbucks.

My body trembled. I fought back the rising tide of desperation. Like magic, I knew this woman could cure me. She could turn back the darkness that crept in at the edges of my soul, even now.

_Like magic. Just like magic._ The image of those two dead bodies in the hotel room came back to me — a stark reminder of the sort of magic she was probably talking about. I felt the oily residue of Victor's insatiable lust on my skin. I remembered the Sight of Marcone, watching me pass with his mostly hollowed-out soul.

There were worse things than death.

"Hard pass," I rasped. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done. "But I appreciate the offer."

The faerie narrowed her eyes at me. I _knew_ there was familiarity there, hiding behind her eyes. It killed me that I didn't know why… but she clearly expected that I shouldn't recognize her in turn. If I started asking questions, that might lead me down a path that ended with Bob getting revealed. Since I was about to kick the bucket anyway, I figured I could live my last few moments burning with curiosity.

"You are _dying,_" she emphasized to me, as though I might not have heard her properly. "I can save you. Do you not wish to live?"

I blinked quickly, but I couldn't dislodge the frost from my eyelashes. "I'm gonna be honest," I managed. "I was feeling a little indifferent on that point for most of today. I'm leaning a little more toward _yes_ than I was earlier… but not at the cost of turning into Victor over there."

The Leanansidhe hissed out her breath in frustration. I wasn't sure why, exactly. In spite of everything she'd said, I was no particular prize. With billions of humans on the planet, I figured she could easily find another woman with a badge and a bad sense of self-preservation.

"You haven't even heard my terms yet, mortal," she told me coldly. "I do not want your servitude. In exchange for saving your life, I shall ask only one favor, to be repaid at a later date." She glanced toward Victor, still cringing back from the hounds in the snow, clutching at his bleeding mouth. "I am no healer, of course. I shall have to give you _his_ life. But he did promise me blood and power, and I feel it only fair that I accept his offering."

I shuddered at that. A favor to a wicked faerie in return for sucking down Victor's life force sounded pretty gross, all told. I wasn't sure the Leanansidhe had a great understanding of how to appeal to people who _weren't_ dressed all in black and covered in dark magic.

I opened my mouth to refuse again… but pain blossomed in my jaw, sharp and hard, and I gasped for breath, unable to speak.

"What are you _doing,_ kid?" Bob demanded. There was a desperation in his voice. "You don't have to die! It's just a favor — we can deal with that!" His voice rose to a strangely hysterical pitch. "You don't have to _die!"_

I couldn't answer him directly. The Leanansidhe was looking at me expectantly, and I could now feel every inch of my broken jaw. I let my head fall back, reaching for my mouth with a sob.

The pain vanished as abruptly as it had come. Bob leaned over me, taking me by the shoulders. His eyes glowed that strange, firefly orange-gold. "Kid, _please,_" he begged me. "Please don't say no. Third time's the charm. If you turn her down again, that's it."

I looked him in the eyes, helpless. I didn't know how to explain it all to him. I didn't have the words to tell him what it meant to become a monster, just to save myself.

Bob choked. "Kid," he said. "You owe me a favor. I'm calling it in. Next thing outta your mouth has to be some form of _yes_, or else you never meant it."

I stared at him. _I did,_ I thought. _I said that to him._

"You're my host right now," he said. "If you die, I've got nowhere to go. Even if the witch over there doesn't end me, I'm still stuck in the middle of Winter, where they don't like me very much." His fingers dug into my shoulders. "I wasn't gonna tell you before. Seemed like a downer way to go out. But she's offering a way out. If you won't take it for you, take it for _me_, kid."

I swallowed hard.

I didn't want to indebt myself to that _thing_. I knew, deep down in my soul, that it was an awful, terrible idea. But I felt Bob's presence buzzing just beneath my skin, _alive_. The image I had dreamed up for him in my head stood before me, with features just close enough to my father's that I felt my throat lock up.

I was the one who'd asked him to come with me. I was the one who'd jumped in after Victor. Every step of the way so far, Bob had done nothing but help me, even when it was deeply inadvisable. Maybe that was a function of how he worked, what he _had_ to do because I had his skull. But even after I'd given that to Waldo, the spirit had followed me here, knowing what it might cost him.

Bob was the closest thing left I had to family. I couldn't let him die.

I blinked back tears… and nodded, ever-so-slightly. The Leanansidhe smiled, pleased — and, I thought, a little bit relieved?

Bob sighed in relief. "Okay," he said. "Okay." A low, buzzing panic just beneath my skin gave way, as he rubbed at his face. "We're good. We can work with this. We can get you home." He took in a deep, shuddering breath. "You're in a corner, but that doesn't mean we have to let her take you for all you're worth, kid. Now, repeat after me, _exactly_ like I say it."

I listened to him speak. I took a breath, and started talking. "On a few conditions," I said.

The Leanansidhe frowned at that. "_Conditions,_" she repeated, disbelieving.

"Yeah," I said hoarsely. "Take 'em or leave 'em. I figure I haven't got much time left, though, so it'll have to be a quick decision."

The faerie narrowed her eyes.

"One: you heal me back to perfect health — no more, no less. You don't make any other alterations to my mind, body, or spirit." I took in another shuddering breath, while Bob repeated the next part a few times, very carefully. "Two: you open the Way back home for me, and you do everything in your power to make sure I get there as safely and quickly as possible, without using your power on me directly."

The Leanansidhe's delicate eyebrows crept upward. I wondered for just a second whether she was going to turn me down out of sheer anger. But I hoped I hadn't imagined that relief in her eyes. She _wanted_ me to take this deal, for reasons she wasn't going to fess up to. If that was the case, I could push the envelope at least a little bit further.

"Three: you don't use your debt to spy on me and you don't seek me out in any way until you're ready to call in your favor. When you do call it in, I have the right to refuse, in which case the original contract becomes null and void."

I had to resist the urge to glance toward Bob at that. It sounded an awful lot like a death clause.

The faerie drew herself up sharply, hissing in her breath. "Anything _else?_" she demanded.

I gave a long pause. My vision was starting to go black at the edges. Bob probably could have kept going, but I realized I wasn't going to _last_ that long. "No," I said wearily. "That's it." I felt my eyes glaze over. My heart was getting weak.

The Leanansidhe hissed in annoyance. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I agree."

She leaned down to press her lips to my forehead. Victor's blood left a red mark there, in the shape of her perfect lips.

I heard him scream again, even without a tongue. It was a horrible, strangled noise. It went on… and on.

I closed my eyes against it, sickened. Cold power misted along my body, burrowing deep into my flesh. Slowly, I felt things begin to _knit_, one-by-one. The place in my leg, where one of Helen Beckitt's bullets had torn my femoral artery. The fracture in my jaw and the cuts in my mouth, from when Victor had kicked me. The burn along my wrist, where my mother's bracelet had melted into my skin. Even the various aches and pains and gashes I'd gotten from the last few days, when I'd tangled with the demon and the scorpion.

"I am _really_ glad you're not feeling any of this," Bob muttered. He sounded as shaken as I felt.

The screaming faded away. When I opened my eyes, I was perfectly hale and healthy — I had more energy, more awareness than I had felt in years.

Victor Sells sprawled along the bloody snow, his face tormented in agony. I knew he was a swiftly-cooling corpse.

"Well then," said the Leanansidhe sharply. "As quickly as I am able, you said. Let us not _tarry_, mortal child."

She raked those sharpened nails along the air before us…

...and I found myself standing in the middle of a burning building.


	21. Chapter 21

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

_Chapter Twenty-One_

The Leanansidhe was clearly snippy with me. She wanted me to quaver in my boots and reassess my life choices.

...but thankfully, she didn't _really_ want me dead.

I saw her form outlined among the flames, her eyes dancing with furious power. A cold, bitter wind swept across the burning lake house like dark wings, snuffing the fire utterly where it passed.

I have to admit. I was impressed, and not in the fun way.

The faerie's tall, pale figure stood beside me for a moment in the still darkness. She turned, then, toward the rippling veil that still led into Winter. Her golden eyes glinted at me.

"I shall come for you," she said, her voice ringing on the storm overhead. "And when I do… you shall answer my wishes, or else you shall sorely grieve this day."

I stared at her, as the edges of her opalescent gown began to fade into the Nevernever. "I believe you," I managed.

That earned a cold, narrow smile from her… just before she disappeared entirely.

I looked around at the empty shell of the lake house. Part of me surveyed it out of sheer habit, though I wasn't really mentally present.

There was a bloody, half-burned body off to my right that looked like what remained of Greg Beckitt. I didn't immediately see Hendricks or Carmichael, though — I had no idea what condition they might be in. Not far from me, Victor's altar still stood relatively untouched, though either circumstance or the Leanansidhe had snuffed out the candles there.

A thick, leather-bound book was still open on that altar, its pages turned to some reference point. I looked it over dully. It clearly wasn't any kind of original Egyptian text, but it had hieroglyphics scribbled out within it, with English notations in the margins. It was still old enough to have been written by some archaeologist in the twenties or thirties. There were layers of notes, written with increasing urgency and decreasing discipline.

I contemplated the book for a moment longer. I reached out to close it, and gently tucked it underneath my arm. I didn't have any magic of my own; the danger of me using whatever was in there to hurt someone was zero to nil. But even feeling as awful as I did, I knew the value of the knowledge in there. If another Victor came along anytime soon, I'd have a slightly better chance of dealing with him.

I slowly picked my way out of the house, wary of the potentially unstable flooring. As I stumbled out, I saw Hendricks stepping away from a tree, where he'd just finished cabling a hastily-blindfolded figure. His eyes fixed instantly upon me as I headed out from the smoldering lake house. The dying fire had probably made an impression.

"Jesus Christ, Murph!" I heard Carmichael hiss, and I turned to see him headed toward me. He'd torn off his mask, so I could see that he was covered in soot and little burns. I winced. He'd probably been searching the burning house for me. "What happened in there?" he demanded.

I blinked slowly. My brain still hadn't caught up with the fact that I was no longer dying. I felt a weird kind of numbness set in. "I can't right now," I managed. "I'll process later."

He reached out to duck underneath my shoulder, and I realized he thought I was still injured. I didn't have the mental capacity to explain things to him, so I let him hold onto me as we headed back up toward the car.

Hendricks opened the door to the passenger seat, like a gentleman. Carmichael dumped me into the front, and I leaned back to stare at the ceiling of the car.

"You're alive," Hendricks observed, as he shuffled into the driver's seat.

"I'm alive," I repeated, dull and disbelieving.

I still felt Bob humming underneath my skin — but he'd gone silent on me for the moment, and disappeared.

"The wizard?" Hendricks asked.

I shuddered. Victor's screams still echoed in my ears. His life still rushed through my veins. I tried very hard not to think about it. "He's… he's done."

Hendricks nodded. "Left the woman tied up," he said. He sounded disapproving. "She tried to kill you — should have ended her, but your partner insisted. Fire trucks will find her."

_She did kill me._ The words were on my tongue. But I didn't say them out loud. "Thanks, Ron," I mumbled. Intellectually, I knew Hendricks was right — Helen Beckitt had participated in all the same murders as Victor, and she'd fired on me with intent to kill. But she wasn't an immediate threat, and I didn't have the stomach for any more death right now.

"You hurt bad anywhere?" Carmichael asked.

I shook my head slowly. I wasn't all right. But I wasn't injured, either.

Hendricks handed something small, white, and fuzzy over into my lap. I stared down at the bunny that Victor had tied up on his altar; someone had carefully wiped away the blood on its head. It was still breathing hard, terrified. I scratched absently behind its ears.

"You saved the bunny," I observed blankly.

Hendricks gave me a flat look. "It didn't hurt anyone," he said.

Carmichael pushed his way into the back seat, and Hendricks started up the SUV.

The ride home was very, very quiet.

0-0-0-0

I realized somewhere near the IHOP that Monica was still in fear for her life. I fumbled for her phone, and shot a short call to Father Forthill to assure them both that she could go to sleep. I told him Victor wasn't coming back, though I wasn't heavy on the details. I barely wanted to know them myself.

I thought about Waldo. I knew I needed to call him too — but I wasn't feeling nearly ready for that. I knew that if I tried now, I wouldn't be able to keep my voice normal. That could lead to questions I wasn't feeling up to answering.

_Soon,_ I promised myself, feeling dazed.

We pulled back into the parking lot. It was a short affair after that. Hendricks didn't say goodbye — he just nodded at the two of us, and got back into his car. I briefly wondered if I would ever see him or the bunny again.

"So… that happened," Carmichael observed, once we'd both settled back into his car.

I leaned my head into my hands. "Yeah," I said. "What a fucking night."

We sat in silence for a long time, in the shadow of a sign that advertised twenty-four hour pancakes.

"...and you're really sure he's—"

"_Really_ sure," I emphasized, with a faint shiver. "I didn't kill him, Ron. I did sign his death warrant. I all but pulled the trigger." I closed my eyes against the thought. "But in the end… something worse got him."

Carmichael swallowed. He looked out the car window into the night. I knew he was chewing on the things he'd seen today. Right here, right now, he was a believer. That made for some scary thinking.

"What the hell am I gonna do with this case?" he muttered, finally.

Good old Carmichael. Back to the practical basics.

"They're going to find a dead body and a tied-up woman at Victor's burned-out lake house shortly," I told him. "That sounds like lots of probable cause for searches and warrants to me. And Monica said he confessed the murders to her. If she comes in to talk, she can put that on the record. Doesn't mean she has to mention how he did it."

He jerked out a nod. "I guess we'll be charging him for stuff in absentia," he muttered.

"Walker won't care, as long as the case is closed," I said tiredly.

Carmichael watched me for another few moments. He seemed torn between asking more questions and not wanting to know the answers.

Finally, he started up the car, and quietly drove me home.

0-0-0-0

The moment I closed the door of my house behind me, I started shaking.

There was no good reason for it. I wasn't hurt or cold. I wasn't even tired — I felt perfectly well-rested.

But I had to stumble to my couch to sit down. I dropped Victor's book of spells on the coffee table, and pulled my bloodstained knees up to my chest, breathing quickly.

The panic attack that had been haunting the edges of my mind finally cut loose. I couldn't move, couldn't speak. All I could think of was the way my heart had slowed down, and the knowledge that I'd been only a few minutes from death.

I _should _have died. In any reasonable world, I should have died. The fact that I was still sitting there was a fluke that could be rectified at any moment. I was weirdly, keenly aware of every second as it passed, worried that it could all be snatched away.

I didn't understand it. For so long, I'd been barely clinging to my will to keep going. I'd all but dared the world to end me. That hadn't been some kind of phase — I'd meant it, believed it.

How could I _also_ be so terrified of dying?

Time passed like a snail. I couldn't seem to get my breathing or my heartbeat under control. Eventually, though, it occurred to me that Bob still had yet to say a word since we'd left the Nevernever.

"...Bob?" I croaked out. "You okay?"

Silence dominated for a long while. I felt the electric tingle beneath my skin, though. Eventually, I heard a faint voice, though the illusion I'd grown used to seeing didn't appear again. "_Fine, kid,_" he whispered. I heard the distress and confusion in his voice, though. _"I think… maybe I'm just tired."_

A spike of worry cut through my breakdown. "You need your skull?" I asked.

"_...yeah. Yeah, maybe that's a good idea,"_ he mumbled. He didn't sound certain, but at least it was something I could do.

I forced myself off the couch, and headed for the landline. I wasn't ready to sound calm and collected. But I was beginning to suspect I wouldn't be capable of that for a long time to come.

"_Hello?"_ Waldo answered after a few rings.

"Hey," I said. "I'm… I'm home."

I wasn't sure what to say after that. My brain hadn't offered me a plan that far in advance.

"_Karrin?"_ he said. A hint of relief filtered through. _"Oh, thank goodness. Are you okay?"_

I thought on that. I thought on it much longer than I normally would have done. I had to force the words to make sense in my head. "...yeah," I said finally, forcing myself back onto script. "Yeah, I'm fine."

A brief silence followed.

"_You don't really sound fine,"_ Waldo admitted. _"I'm back home. Would, uh. Would you like me to head over? I could bring Bob, if it would make you feel better._"

That one took another bit to parse. Bob? Bob was here with me, still shivering under my skin. But I realized belatedly that I'd used his name in front of Waldo. He probably thought I'd named the _skull_.

"That would help a lot," I managed. "Thanks."

"_No problem. I'll check your stitches while I'm there. I'm sure you haven't been gentle on them."_

My stitches? I glanced down at my arm, remembering them for the first time. I tugged up my sleeve with one hand — and stared. The gash on my arm had completely disappeared. All that remained was a line of Waldo's neat stitches, threaded through unscarred, unbroken skin.

I blinked slowly. I found myself at a sudden loss for words. I had no idea how I was going to explain that.

"_Karrin? You still there?"_

I took in a breath. "I am. Uh. The stitches are…" My brain skipped a beat. "...fine." The word came out lame. I was repeating myself. None of this was coming out very well at all.

"_...I'll head out now."_ I heard the gentle worry in his voice, and I cursed myself for my acute lack of eloquence. _"Should be there soon._"

The phone hung up.

In the silence that followed, I noted the bloody smears on my arm, my leg, my jaw. I groaned dimly. The planning ahead part of my brain was utterly broken. I needed to clean this hellish night off me before Waldo arrived. I had no idea how he would react to seeing it — I just knew that it wasn't something I was equipped to deal with right now.

I stumbled for the shower.

0-0-0-0

"I'll admit, I was expecting much worse," Waldo said apologetically, as I opened the door for him. "But it looks like you got a bit of rest after all."

I'd managed to clean the worst off of me and tug on a fresh long-sleeve and pyjama bottoms before he got there. The life that the Leanansidhe had stolen for me had me looking relatively fresh-faced, in spite of the utter chaos that currently swirled in my head.

Waldo offered Bob's skull out to me. I took the anchor with an audible sigh of relief. A moment later, there was a flicker of that electricity beneath my skin. I felt the spirit depart like a headrush. A weak orange glow flickered in the eye sockets that currently faced me, then slowly faded away once more.

When I looked back up, I saw Waldo considering me uncertainly. "You want some company?" he asked.

I thought on that. I realized that I did. Moreover, I wanted _Waldo's_ company. There was no rhyme or reason to it, except that I knew I would feel better with him around.

"I really, really do," I sighed. I opened the door a bit wider for him, and he headed inside.

I set Bob's skull back on the mantle, and went to put on some coffee. I came back out with a mug for each of us. I ended up sitting on the other side of the couch from him, drinking in awkward silence.

Waldo was wearing what I would generously refer to as "normal-person clothing" — he'd dredged up an old Oktoberfest t-shirt and jeans, which made him look even more like a geeky, bespectacled scarecrow. I'd rarely seen him in anything other than scrubs, so it just added to the strangeness of the atmosphere. I could tell he expected I had something to say, but he was doing his best to wait patiently for me to sort it out.

I knew I _should_ say something, but I couldn't figure out what. To be sure, I was _thinking_ lots of things, but I didn't have the first idea how to go about sharing them. I'd promised both Carmichael and the Father that I'd try to talk more and bottle up less, but the things I was thinking about were frightening on a good day, and all tangled up in my head to boot.

"Waldo," I said finally. "Can I… can I ask you something a little uncomfortable?"

Waldo glanced over at me over his coffee. He managed a faint smile. "Well. I guess you can _ask_," he said. "I'll reserve the right to give you a silly answer, though."

I found I couldn't look him in the eyes. I forced the words out, though, as I stared at the cartoon beer stein on his shirt. "We both work around a lot of dead people," I said. "I thought I'd gotten over my fear of death, but now I'm not so sure." I chewed on my lip. "You seem pretty well-adjusted. How do _you_ deal with it?"

Waldo let out a long breath. "Oh," he said. I felt his eyes on me, reassessing my current state in light of my question. "Well. You really went for the heavy one." I nearly took back the question, but he shook his head at me. "It's okay. I just have to think about it for a second, is all."

He took another few long swallows of coffee. Then: "I don't deal with it. I mean, not well. I wanted to be a doctor, originally. I sidestepped into my current job because I couldn't handle the stakes." Waldo sighed, and a small, helpless smile crossed his lips. "I still feel like a coward over it, if I'm going to be honest. I wanted to save lives, but I was too scared of failing. Working with people who were already dead just seemed safer by comparison. I'm literally hiding from death in a basement, you know?"

That helpless smile was the same one I'd Seen on his soul. It comforted me in a weird way, though I knew Waldo meant every word he'd said.

"I don't think you're a coward," I said. "You stitched me up, even though you were scared to do it."

Waldo flushed. "Well," he said. "Uh." He fumbled through the next words. "You know, you… you have that effect on people, Karrin. You're always forcing yourself to do hard things. I think it gives the rest of us a little bit of extra courage when you're around, to do the same." He rubbed at his neck, embarrassed. "I don't know that I would have offered, if you weren't involved."

That surprised me. I glanced up at him, and saw that he was the one avoiding my eyes now.

"But, um. As far as your original question," he added hastily, changing the subject. "I mean, I do have _coping_ mechanisms. I try to enjoy the little things, and not worry too much about what other people think. Like… I enjoy polka. I know it's silly — but it makes me happy, so I've stopped thinking too hard about it."

I smiled at that. "That probably would have been a healthier way to go about it than the one I chose," I admitted. I thought back on the last few years, in the context of what I'd learned about myself lately. "I think… when my dad died, it really shook me. I think some part of me decided I had to practice getting closer and closer to death, so I wouldn't be scared when it finally came for real." I swallowed. "It didn't help, though. I came really close to dying. I missed it by an inch. It scared the hell out of me."

Waldo reached out to take my hand, squeezing gently. I clutched his fingers with a shaking hand.

"You know what I think, Karrin?" he asked me seriously. I looked up, meeting his eyes behind his glasses. "I think there _is _no good way to deal with this stuff. We're built to be scared of death. It's one of our deepest biological instincts to avoid death at all costs… but we're all doomed to fail eventually, you know?" He smiled wryly. "It's a really awful catch twenty-two. Whoever came up with the whole idea has a very bad sense of humor."

I let out a long breath. The shivers had started up again. "Yeah," I mumbled. "Me and Him are a good long way from making up."

Waldo hugged me awkwardly. I closed my eyes and buried my face in his shoulder. He smelled like wintergreen. He'd once told me he used the oil to mask bad smells while he worked. It shouldn't have been a comforting scent, with that in mind — but somewhere along the way, I'd started associating it with him, and it made me feel better.

I stayed there for a good long while, leaning on his shoulder. I expected Waldo to nudge me away after a bit, or make a joke to break the atmosphere, but he just held on and let me breathe.

Between them, I realized, Waldo and Father Forthill had barely helped me keep hold of my health and sanity for the last few days. I wanted to tell Waldo how much that meant to me, but I just didn't have the words. I'd spent so long not talking about things like this that I didn't have the vocabulary or the social script.

"Um," I mumbled. "You're a good man, Waldo Butters."

He tightened his hug on me. "I've got my good days," he said. 

0-0-0-0

I woke up to the sound of someone knocking at my front door.

I blinked, trying to process things. My neck was a little sore; everything smelled a little bit like wintergreen. Slowly, I realized that I had fallen asleep on Waldo's shoulder. He was still knocked out himself, in a terribly uncomfortable-looking position, his glasses askew.

Another knock sounded. It was terribly polite, as though worried about disturbing me. I slowly untangled myself from Waldo, keenly aware of the flush that had started to creep up my face.

I peered through the eyelet on the door. Monica was standing on the other side, dressed in what looked like clothing out of the church donation bin. She looked utterly exhausted.

I opened the door, trying to drag myself back to wakefulness. Monica focused on me, hesitant. She offered out what looked like a box of pastries and a coffee.

"The Father brought your motorcycle back," she said. "In the van. I told him I wanted to come with him."

I rubbed at my face, and reached out to take the food from her, dazed. _I murdered a wizard and all I got was these lousy donuts,_ came the humorous thought. I pushed it away. "You're doing okay?" I asked.

Monica blinked slowly. "No," she said. "But I'm alive. That means I might be okay, eventually." She hesitated. "We haven't spoken under very good circumstances. I didn't want to leave things as they were. You went out of your way to help me; you had no reason to do that." Her green eyes were dull. I knew she had yet to clear herself from the trauma she'd endured for the last few days. "I'm a mess right now. I'm not grateful. I'm not much of anything. But I know I _will_ be grateful, once I'm able to feel things again. I needed to tell you that."

I took a sip of the coffee. It was good stuff. Better than the stuff we made at the precinct, certainly. It woke me up a little bit. "How are the kids?" I asked.

"Better, now that we can go home," Monica said. "Though we won't be staying there forever. The Father said he has friends that can help us disappear. He said until we know whether Victor had any friends involved with what he was doing, it's best that we go somewhere safer."

I nodded slowly. "I think he's right," I said. "I didn't have the chance to worry about accomplices, past the Beckitts. I'll keep looking into it, but you don't need to be here for that." I hesitated. "It'd really help us out if you could come into the station and give a statement on some stuff, on the record. Not the… not all of it. But enough that we can get a judge to sign off on us digging into his affairs more."

Monica jerked her head in the affirmative. "Of course," she said. "Anything you need."

I sighed. "Let me go get your cell phone. I'll just be a second."

I turned to head back inside. Back in the living room, I saw Waldo sitting awake, rubbing at his arm with a wince. The flush crept further up my face, undaunted by my attempts to quell it. "Hey," I mumbled, setting the coffee and the pastries down on the table. "Someone brought breakfast. You want some?"

Waldo tipped open the lid of the box. He brightened. "Hey!" he said. "I love bear claws."

I grabbed Monica's cell phone from the table, and headed back to hand it off. She fidgeted for a moment with her sweater, then threw her arms around me in yet another awkward hug. It occurred to me that I was collecting them lately.

"Thank you," she said. Her voice wavered, then steadied again. "For the kids, if not for me."

I patted her back lightly. The words meant something. They wormed their way inside me, soothing over the doubts and pains that still plagued me over what I'd done. "I hope things get better," I told her.

Monica drew back, and took a long, deep breath. "They will," she said. It sounded like a promise she was making to herself.

Waldo gave me a curious look as I closed the front door and headed back into the living room. "Everything all right?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, and for once, I actually meant it. I snagged an apple turnover from the box. "Everything's actually pretty okay."


	22. Epilogue

**Magie Noire**

**By Rurouni Star**

**A/N:** That's a wrap, folks. I gotta get back to writing and editing on paid stuff. I hope you all enjoyed.

I've obviously got ideas for continuing this series, but it'll have to wait a bit. In the meantime, feel free to let me know which things you enjoyed and would like to see more of, and any future scenes you're just dying to see Murphy-fied.

_Epilogue_

I spent a comparatively pleasant morning eating pastries with a good friend. Waldo belatedly remembered that he'd intended to check on my stitches, but I just managed to put him off with the observation that he probably had to get to work.

Bob seemed to have mostly recovered from whatever malaise he'd picked up, after a night in the skull, though he insisted on binging more Discovery Channel over the next few days.

I split my time between getting some actual rest and sifting through the rantings in Victor's book. It wasn't the most pleasant bedtime reading, but then, it wasn't a whole lot worse than crime scene photos and statements from family of the victim. I made notes of a few things to ask Bob about when he was feeling better.

I did, in the end, call up Susan to give her a few juicy details that no one in their right mind was likely to ever believe. I even used the word _wizard_. I wasn't sure where our relationship stood, now that I'd discovered she wasn't a crazy conspiracy theorist. I knew I was going to need to think very hard on how much I wanted to spill. Thankfully, I had that time to think.

Carmichael called to check in a few times. It was comparatively good news on his end. Because the fire at the lake house had been snuffed, the firemen had discovered a sizeable cache of Three-Eye downstairs, unburned. Between that and Monica's statements, Carmichael had been able to dig up some hard financial connections between Victor and the Beckitts, and bring in Helen on laundering and drug-related charges. She had a fantastic lawyer defending her, but even with that, she was bound to go to prison for a good few years.

Carmichael did tell me something that gave me pause, though.

"Marcone called the office looking for you," he said. "Told him you're on leave, obviously, but he insisted he wanted to talk. Up to you."

Which is, more or less, how I ended up sitting at the rehabilitated Varsity, nursing a glass of whiskey in a side booth.

"Detective." Marcone addressed me with cool politeness as he slid in across from me. "I do hope your health is improved."

Hendricks had come into the bar behind him; the bodyguard gave me what I thought might be an almost friendly nod, though it was hard to tell under that poker face of his.

I eyed Marcone warily. "Fit as a fiddle," I said. "I'll be clear for work any day now."

Marcone crossed his arms as he considered me. I couldn't tell what was going on behind those flat green eyes. "I don't suppose you've reconsidered my offer," he observed.

I downed the rest of the whiskey. I needed the burn. "Thought you weren't feeling pleased with me," I said. "Something about, I was going to deeply regret my actions?"

The mobster leaned back in his seat. "I don't often change my mind," he said. "But I'm not so foolish I can't admit the favors you've done for me. I'm alive, for one. And a man that some might call my foremost rival has mysteriously disappeared."

I grimaced. "Those weren't favors to you," I said. "And as for the rest… I'm not thrilled with the idea of a long-term relationship. I've learned not to say _never_, but you're relatively low on my list of people to call." I eyed him warily. "I'm looking for the right way to handle this stuff. There's not a lot of solid options at the moment, but that doesn't mean I can't make some of my own."

Marcone considered that. After a moment, he nodded. "I suppose that will do," he said. I knew I'd budged an inch from _never talk to me again_. He probably suspected that I'd budge another inch, given time and patience. I had to make sure it didn't come to that.

"That all you wanted?" I asked.

Marcone's gaze went distant for a moment. "No," he said. "I wanted to ask for the truth. The things you won't be putting into your official report."

I felt my posture stiffen. "I'm sure you've already heard anything I'd be willing to tell you," I said. I still hadn't told anyone about what had happened in the Nevernever. I wasn't sure if I ever would.

Marcone glanced my way. "I think you've mistaken me," he said. "I just wanted to know why Tomm died."

I frowned. There was a distinctly human look to Marcone as he said the words. _He wants closure,_ I realized. It was a weird thing to recognize. Of all things, Gentleman Johnny Marcone was grieving like a normal human being.

I sighed. "Victor was abusing his wife and children," I told him. "Tommy Tomm got mixed up trying to help Linda and Jennifer extract her. It might also have been about the drugs… but it was mostly Victor's need for control." I eyed him bleakly. "He died doing a good thing."

Some undetermined emotion flickered behind Marcone's eyes. He nodded slowly. "Thank you," he said. They were simple words, but I knew he didn't say them often. "I think… perhaps it would be best if you and your partner told a different story. One that centered around the drugs a bit more."

I knitted my brow. "You want me to implicate you _more?_" I asked.

Marcone shrugged. "I have lawyers," he told me. "They'll tell you that your proof of my involvement in any of this is very thin." His eyes were shuttered now. "Madame Bianca is looking for reparations for the loss of her girl. Her people have decided that Jennifer died due to Tommy's carelessness. If the story became one about this man's wife and children instead, Bianca might decide to demand reparations from them instead. She is not known for her mercy."

I chewed on that for a long moment. "...you're gonna pay her?" I asked.

Marcone stayed silent for a long moment. "I was considering pushing back," he said. "But it may be the best way to ensure that the matter is settled. I would rather honor Tomm's intentions, and see that his death had some meaning."

I nodded slowly. "Okay," I said. "I'll talk to Ron." I sighed. "I'm not your biggest fan. But that's a damned decent thing to do."

A ghost of a smile crossed Marcone's lips. "You're full of firsts today, Detective," he said.

I flicked a few bills onto the table. "I'm looking forward to hating you again tomorrow," I told him. "Feels way more normal."

I nodded at Hendricks on my way out. "How's the bunny?" I asked.

"Pregnant," he informed me, with a long-suffering air. "Do you want one?"

I grinned in spite of myself. "Nah. You're gonna be a great dad."

The smile stuck around for a good few hours afterward.

0-0-0-0

The day before I was cleared to go back to desk duty, I decided to go through my mother's things more fully.

The trunk had a few more things packed in silk. I unrolled an old wand, and nearly nicked myself on a razor-sharp silver dagger. But at the very bottom of the trunk, I found something that gave me pause.

It was an old tome — much older than the one Victor had been using. It had no title along the spine; I had to open it up to find a handwritten one on the first page.

_Le livre de sang,_ it said, in a faded, ugly brown ink.

An uneasy feeling rose up inside me. I'd have to be a pretty piss-poor detective not to recognize dried blood.

The entirety of the book was in French. My piecemeal understanding wasn't enough to translate it entirely, but I didn't need a perfect translation to know the gist of what it covered.

I felt the most distant snatch of memory struggle to make its way to the top of my mind. The crimson bonds on my memory tightened — but I forced myself to relax, to focus on slackening their grip.

_Come on, _I thought. _What do I know about this book?_

I had a flash of my mother's face.

"_Don't touch that!"_

Her expression was scared, frantic. I remembered her fingers digging into my wrist, hard enough to bruise.

"_Don't tell anyone about this book,"_ she hissed. _"Promise me, Karrin. They'll come and take me away if they find out."_

I stared at the book in my hands.

I'd just chased down a black wizard… but somehow, it had never occurred to me that I might have been raised by one.


End file.
